Content producers have the challenge of providing effective and cost-efficient communication tools to a sector that is experiencing enormous growth.
Juan Pablo Morales Sarmiento
Believe it or not, there are now communities that largely base their children's education on documentaries and pay-TV content through channels that you and I receive at home in our basic package. There are children who no longer go to school and who develop their skills with a philosophy quite different from the traditional one and a self-discipline that many people lack.
Additionally, the huge industry of technical and professional education has not been oblivious to the technological transformation and cultural changes that access to information is motivating irreversibly, so that many of the tools for learning skills based on creativity, logical thinking and technology, find in the Internet the perfect place to stay and be distributed.
According to a recent study by the company ReportLinker, the global eLearning market will grow for the next decade at a CAGR of more than 7% and reach the sum of $325 billion by 2025.
As I introduced in the previous article, being a market trend that will surely continue to grow at an accelerated pace, the production of video content for online education platforms will have an increasingly important role in the economy, and the creative initiatives that are targeting this sector today will have a significant advantage in the medium term.
Key factors
I recently heard a colleague who also advises education and content projects say that an eLearning platform is like a building that must be paid close attention to when building it, so it should not be taken lightly.
Reflecting on that statement, I think this person is by far quite wrong because building an education platform has many edges, and the technology is barely comparable to the foundations of the building. The human and community factor, the business strategy, the contents, the methodologies, the commitment and the cultural change of the teachers are just part of what houses a virtual building of education.
Whether for a university or for a company, there are factors that transcend technology, so to address an online education initiative you must focus the work on the following axes:
1. Technology. Of course, an integration with an LMS is a strategic decision that must focus on factors such as scalability and security, so that it supports in a versatile way the changes that the business models demand and whose growth can be done gradually.
2. Usability and User Experience. We are one click away from anything today, so promoting the completion and retention of students in models that invite continuous buybacks, are the result of having a design oriented to the user experience and the gamification of learning.
3. Traceability and Lifeline. From video game creators there is much to learn in the education sector. Some of the great lessons that this industry can leave us are: the ease of making a process traceable, so that each player knows how many lives he has left, how many steps he has overcome, how many he has yet to overcome and how many points he has won compared to his opponents. In eLearning, earning small cumulative goals, continuously overcoming learning successes and being able to measure them and establish the route of each course are critical elements to keep students motivated.
4. Practicality and Effectiveness. An online learning process must be oriented with clear and practical messages that maintain continuous attention and that do not allow distractors that disengage students in their process. They should concentrate messages by taking advantage of people's short attention spans.
5. Orientation to metrics and results. The real-time measurement of variables such as frequency, permanence, progress rates and academic approval, give management very useful information about its population, so that it allows it to segment, design and offer new products or experiences and detect gaps and opportunities for improvement that, with the experience curve, are increasingly easy to implement.
6. Contents. And when I talk about content, beyond the importance of quality and care in the creation of infographics, instructional guides and illustrations; I'm talking about interactive Virtual Learning Objects based on Video. This is a format that is changing the way we live, relate, work and learn. Video has the unlimited potential to engage and entertain while teaching. Online learning is based today more than ever on Video and the success of any eLearning initiative will depend on the creativity, coherence, narrative and invoice of the video that integrates it.
Edutainment. from TV to digital campus
Just as the power of realities lies in the human need to see herself reflected within fiction, gaining the ability to feel that her dreams can become reality and making the aspirational practically tangible; and in the same way that the strength of some YouTubers lies in the ability to ridicule themselves to find in the simplicity of the empty a common thread and a narrative with which the masses can be connected; the educational contents have the mission of connecting with the student by building each message under a philosophy of playfulness and entertainment with enough power to transmit concepts, knowledge and skills.
In this order of ideas, content producers have the challenge of providing effective and cost-efficient communication tools to a sector that is experiencing enormous growth and that needs video solutions at an industrial level.
Corporations, universities or online education initiatives oriented to quality, will surely begin to select their video content under the following premises:
1. Planning. It is important to determine at what point in an online course the video should go, either in the introduction of each topic or at the closing, each element must be thought carefully and strategically. The contents must be elaborated in a manner consistent with the curricular design and must be refined so that all key aspects are included in the libretto and that all visual elements support the same narrative. To the extent that production planning and design are done in an orderly manner, economies of scale can be achieved that allow cost savings and efficient shootings.
2. Pre-production. Always the elaboration of a libretto is fundamental. It is the guide that will differentiate the important from the unnecessary. The videos must be thought of so that the user lives them as small continuous successes. They should preferably be short-lived, focused on practical and precise topics that do not give space to lose concentration and engagement.
3. Entertainment. Through the use of techniques such as 3D or 2D animation, motion graphics, chroma keys, the use of audiovisual tools such as digital whiteboards and the use of camera movements that transcend the simplicity of a panning or zoom, towards movements that give the user the feeling of being present, changing the perspective with travellings and capturing attention with optical depths of field as cinematographic as effective. Making the learning experience a playful and entertaining process, that goes beyond what we all know as a videoconference, and that touches at least the limits of the broadcast, both creatively and technically, becomes a critical success factor for any learning experience. The internet is full of good, cheap and entertaining courses and yours should have a differential.
4. Interactivity. Encouraging online and real-time exchange of opinions, questions and answers is also much more effective through video than in written forums. Its importance lies in the social need to inter-relate as a community and establish ties outside the digital. For this reason it is essential to experiment with the use of live streaming technologies through social networks and even contacts through WhatsApp that promote the relationship with different limits than those established by the same platform.
5. Profitability. The cost of making videos, updating them, editing them, and distributing them is something that shouldn't be taken lightly. For this reason it is important to find models that provide economies of scale to support the entire workflow, as well as to facilitate and make efficient technical and creative resources. Concentrating filming in a few days can make the difference between the feasibility or not of an eLearning project. The selection of locations and talent and their effective use are variables that determine the relationship between cost / benefit in a forceful way.
The human resources areas of organizations have an increasingly relevant role in the training of their staff. It is no longer just about ensuring good selection processes and delivering empty training indicators. The power of video is changing paradigms in this regard. Training staff in multiple competencies remotely is now easier and more robustly measured. Video makes a difference.
Juan Pablo Morales Sarmiento is CEO of Nuevos Medios. You can contact him through his Twitter account @JuanPMoralesS.
