Virtual Media Quality Index (W-Index) for Higher Institutions of Education

Abstract

The simplicity and ease of access of its website, has allowed YouTube to be embraced by the whole world and establish itself as the most prominent form of video sharing on earth. YouTube has become a widely used medium for individuals, corporations, and academic institutions alike. In the current work a W-index has been developed and applied to many academic institutions to evaluate the efficacy of the respective YouTube channel(s). This index was the creative product of the senior author who was inspired by the H-index developed by J.E. Hirsch (2005) to evaluate the productivity and impact of a researcher. The W-index will be used to evaluate the quantity and quality of a University’s channel that is different from the traditional staples that define popularity and video effectiveness on YouTube, such as total views. The methodology used would be to see that if this W-index would correlate well to existing indices used for the evaluation of universities. Eventually, the W-index could serve as an indicator of whether or not a university needs to invest time or money into the development of better videos or more videos for their YouTube channel to maximize its impact on the academic community. A correlation between W-Index and three well-established and well-defined cybermetric rankings; US Rank, Impact Rank, and Excellence Rank, is established and used as the basis for the Windex’s usefulness. The establishment of such a correlation indicates that the W-Index can also be used to evaluate the communication efficacy of individuals, despite the lack of any robust ranking system for individuals. The W-Index serves as a good indicator, based on consistent correlation coefficients among ranking systems analyzed, of a university or individual’s success and communication efficacy. Rankings are useful as single numbers that contribute to decision making, simply because of their simplicity.