Watching a sitcom on Hulu, a 3-D movie in a theater, a funny home video on youtube and a course video on coursera are all, technically, about consuming video content. And yet, we won’t say that they are the same thing.
“It can be used for other things as well, right?” We are often asked by well-wishers when we explain that our product helps educators capture, manage and deliver classroom videos. What does a video-product focused on education even mean?
As the example above shows, a video is a TV show, a movie, a beautiful slice of life, or a lecture. A video is not just a video. The experience and expectations from the products delivering these different kinds of video content are different.
Watching a TV show starts with the need for entertainment. You are getting bored, or you need a break, or you need your daily fix. A movie in a theater may be about getting bored, but it is highly likely that it is about an outing with family or friends, your appreciation for specific director or actor, or a love of the medium. Coursera video consumption starts at your need to learn more about something specific, proceeds with searching for relevant courses, best teachers, best platform for peer interaction and getting credits, then ends up on the lecture video.
Not only the consumption of different kinds of videos is different, the requirement of content creators are also different. They need different capabilities from the platform used for delivering these videos. And they need this delivery platform to fit with the rest of their operations.
That is why a video product for education. As a business we need a market large enough for being in the business to make sense. As product creators, we need a market narrow enough to be made happy with the capabilities of the product. And as a team, we need something we are passionate about. We think education fits the bill. That’s why CourseHub!
Let me explain with the examples of some of the decisions made in CourseHub keeping in mind the education market.
- Video optimizations: One of the biggest reason an educational institute would want to use an online platform is to increase its reach, most likely to places where physical access to quality teachers is difficult. So, we can not make assumptions about what kind of Internet infrastructure will be available to the learners. At the same time, when a teacher is teaching in the class, blurring of the content on the board, or breaking of his voice won’t be acceptable. That’s why we spent a lot of efforts in making sure that HD-quality classroom videos can be delivered at speeds as low as 100Kbps with CourseHub. For many other applications, this may not be the target market, and hence such efforts may not make business sense. For us, it does!
- Organization of videos: Do you want to have playlists, shows with episodes, or individual movies indexed by themselves? Lectures organized in courses makes sense for education. That is what we did!
- Enabling Capture: A TV show or movie producer has setup to produce, edit and process high-quality videos. It is his job. A home video is fine in whatever quality the camcorder or digital camera captures it. A lecture video needs to be high-quality, but the job of a teacher or even the institute is not to produce videos. It is to teach. That’s why CourseHub includes not only delivery or management of lectures, but also the capture. Further teachers are at their best when they teach in their natural style. So, the capture has been designed to be automated and non-intrusive. It can capture lectures in a regular classroom. Teachers don’t need to sit in front of a webcam, they don’t even have to be aware of the camera. They can teach their class as usual.
- Interactivity: Student-teacher interaction is important for learning. So, CourseHub enables that with no requirement of any special hardware or software at student’s end. It enables sychronous as well as asynchronous interaction.
- Assessments: You wouldn’t usually be quizzed on a TV show at the end of a season, but it is an essential part of completing a course. So, CourseHub has gone beyond videos and created a full-fledged assessment system to help educators and learners have complete educational experience.
The list is practically endless and we are adding to it everyday. Do you have any thoughts on what a video platform of education should have? Let us know!
Filed under: Product Tagged: Aurus, Aurus Network, CourseHub, Distance Education, E-learning, Education, educational videos, Lecture, Lecture Capture, Satellite Classes, Teacher, Virtual classroom
