Is it possible to learn from short videos, what format is the future of educational content and how to determine its quality – discussed with Ora Gitzovich, Head of Marketing and Content at Edudo
We can learn every day, and the digital environment provides great opportunities for this: lectures on YouTube, life hacks from Instagram, insights from TikTok, language learning apps and much more. Educational sources are not getting smaller, and the content on their platforms is multiplying. But how to really spend time on the net with benefit and find a quality educational product is still not clear.
To discuss where and what modern people study today in addition to schools, universities and online courses, what non-obvious opportunities for education technology opens up for us, host Maxim Bulanov invited the head of marketing and content at Edudo Oru Gitsovich.
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Timeline the conversation
03:10 — How young people define trends in education
07:40 — Determining the types of digital educational products
08:50 — About post-irony and “new sincerity” when getting an education
18:00 — About consumption of educational content and waste of time
19:10 — How the economy of non-obvious sources of education works
22:40 — What new educational formats have already changed
24:30 — How to confirm training on microlearning platforms
26:50 — Why some sources of education are not so obscure
Conversation highlights
The younger generation sets trends in many areas of life, and education is no exception. For example, it was they who set the fashion for metamodern and postirony in education. It consists in a departure from rituality in obtaining education and non-recognition of its authoritarianism. Education, which has now become available to everyone, is less and less received on the basis of the idea that “it is necessary”. The trend of “new sincerity” involves getting an education when such a need arises when realizing its significance for oneself.
Education has become more democratic and accessible, among other things, because its receipt is no longer limited to attending schools, universities and additional sections. To learn something new, it is enough to have a phone or laptop with you. And the latter is now losing ground to smartphones, confirming the hypothesis that the well-known e-learning is becoming m-learning (mobile-learning), that is, learning on mobile devices. The main advantage of m-learning over other formats is that learning can be with you, wherever you are.
Short formats are gaining great popularity, however, in the segment of educational content in the same TikTok, rapid growth has not yet been observed. The issuance of educational content in the application recommendations feed will be about 30%, provided that you have liked and interacted with similar videos for a month. There are several reasons for this “injustice”.
The first difficulty is to gain trust on the platform. The authors need to have a credibility with the audience so that they can perceive the expertise of the creators and thus contribute to the promotion of the video in the recommendation.
The second reason is the complexity of creating the content itself. TIkTok and other short video apps are microlearning tools. And it is important to understand that it is not a ten-minute video broken into parts, but an insight, a key idea wrapped in a minute-long video, which is not an easy task to fit into.
The economics of microlearning platforms is quite obvious. Users pay authors for insights, knowledge and practical experience. There are systems of donations and the usual monetization of platforms, for example, through advertising. However, the competition in this segment goes beyond educational content creators. Seeing microlearning as a waste of time is a common misconception. The sites also compete with other “time killers” (mobile games, social networks), so they need to create really high-quality content in order to keep their user.
Compulsory education is losing its former compulsion and importance, as young people see less value in it. Employers less and less pay attention to university diplomas, today they need a specialist with relevant skills and experience. Proof of skill is no longer necessarily a certificate of completion of a course. Much more important is the involvement in the community of a particular platform. It is the community and its members that represent the main value of the educational platform, where everyone’s voice counts. Getting feedback on such a platform and being a part of it becomes more meaningful than having countless certificates and diplomas.
Episode links
- Ernst&Young’s study on the peculiarities of training buzzers
- On the importance of TikTok and similar services in education
- VR math lesson in Half-Life: Alyx
- Interview with sociologist Elena Omelchenko on caution in applying the theory of generations
- How teenagers learn today
- Interview with Yuri Milner on the Russian Norms!
- HSE study on the difficulties of choosing a university after graduation