YouTube as a tool for academic outreach: A statistical study of colleges in Goa

Today, social media sites like YouTube have become a great asset for educational institutions to share information, communicate with students and promote academic and extracurricular activities. In higher education YouTube is significant in students' and teachers' everyday lives when they learn on their own. The aim of this paper is to analyse the videos which are linked to the academic colleges in the state of Goa under the purview of the Directorate of Higher Education. The data for the study is extracted from the respective you tube channels of the different colleges. This analysis is carried out according to the number of videos, subscribers and views. The study will set a baseline of the digital reach and popularity of these institutions as well as identify areas where there is little or no digital presence. Primary data was gathered from the official websites and confirmed with some video sites like YouTube and ViewStats to see how many colleges have active channels and how many views, subscribers and video uploads they have. This study revealed that 67% of the contribution comes from the top five colleges and provided insights into the extent of adaptation of the colleges of Goa to the digital communication trends and which institutions are more effective in YouTube engagement.