A lot’s happened since a TV cart rolling in for an episode of Reading Rainbow was the height of video in education. But don’t take our word for it!
How Video Is Enabling Distance Learning Platforms
Changing Course:
But education’s public and private K-12 subsector—whose teachers and students are in the midst of a digital-technology learning curve nobody expects to flatten anytime soon—hasn’t characterized this reinvention. Instead, that subsector’s resorted to general-purpose, off-the-shelf video conferencing tools and distance learning systems that have forced it to endure a multitude of headaches, like Zoom bombs, hacked and interrupted classrooms, students muting teachers, and more.
No, this revolution is falling squarely on the shoulders of the tutoring, e-learning, and training and coaching subsectors. With the use of live video chat growing 233 percent between 2015 and 2018 alone, those subsectors’ digital transformations had already been well underway when COVID-19 appeared, jolted digital-platform initiatives into overdrive, and forced the industry to use 92 percent more video minutes in April 2020 than in February.
The acceleration of distance learning systems and services is happening, and live video adoption is a big reason why. Let’s take a look at the concepts, use cases, and players in these three distinct education categories and see how shunning off-the-shelf video solutions in favor of robust, built-for-purpose video APIs has driven their success.
It joins hospitality, fitness, beauty, and other in-person service industries whose very definitions have been seismically upended by the pandemic.
Add education to the list of sectors 2020 disrupted.
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Chegg Tutors’ static content wasn’t engaging students as powerfully as an authentic classroom experience would. To fix this, the company decided it needed to offer an exciting, interactive online service with live subject matter experts. With the adoption of the Vonage Video API, Chegg Tutors extended their reach with real-time video, giving students better access to a larger knowledge base. Plus, without the constraints of in-person meetings, students and tutors alike gained the flexibility to arrange for lessons at the times and locations they prefer.
Case study. Chegg Tutors: A tutoring company that matches students with instructors
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Cambly wanted to offer practice sessions with native English speakers through high-quality, secure, in-browser video chat. After the company chose the Vonage Video API, its students were able to practice together and achieve a deeper level of understanding—anywhere, on any device—using body language and non-verbal cues. In addition to the richness it brings to the English-learning experience, the API enables video recording, too, giving students the ability to play back their conversations and further deepen their understanding.
Case study. Cambly: An online English learning and tutoring service
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Digital tutoring platforms connect students to instructors by virtue of their expertise, not merely their location. So whether it’s a third grader taking a piano lesson from a maestro via a tablet’s front camera, the third grader’s teenage sister learning after-school algebra from a classmate’s screen share, or mom receiving lunch-hour 1:1 Spanish instruction at work on her smartphone, a digital tutoring platform can create value for a wide range of demographics and in a variety of environments.
Use case. 1:1 sessions between experts and learners
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Perhaps no other solution so fully characterizes the changing definition of education—and video’s rapidly evolving role in it—as the digital tutoring platform. With its low barrier to entry and lack of school-district or corporate demands to comply with, this platform is a boon to the grassroots, neighborhood tutoring centers and enterprising instructors who strive to share their skills with the students who are eager to broaden their own.
The concept. A digital tutoring platform is a boon for enterprising instructors
Digital tutoring platforms connect students to instructors by virtue of their expertise, not merely their location.
Tutoring
Vonage enabled us to scale quickly to meet our increase in video traffic via its Video API
E-learning
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Next Education, an India-based education solutions provider, noted a surge in demand for 1:1 and one-to-many classroom sessions, live lectures, and training courses—in different cities and even countries—after the emergence of COVID-19. “We saw a rapid increase in the need for video solutions—up to 10 million video minutes per day. This called for us to upgrade our existing systems to be able to cater for the increased video traffic,” said Beas Dev Ralhan, CEO and co-founder. “Vonage enabled us to scale quickly to meet our increase in video traffic via its Video API, which was easy to embed directly into our existing website and app.”
Case study. Next Education: An EdTech provider responds to a rapid increase in demand for live lectures
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While digital tutoring platforms connect learners to experts in 1:1 settings, e-learning platforms connect students to content, instructors, and each other in virtual lecture halls. Whether activating collaboration with live video and voice, facilitating discussion with instant messaging, gathering meaningful analytics for hyper-personalized content, empowering proctors to use multi-camera monitoring and screen sharing to guarantee test integrity, or enabling virtual walk-in office hours, these platforms both facilitate the student/teacher transaction and verify its results.
Use case. Connect learners to curriculum, instructors, and each other in a virtual lecture hall
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For sheer scholastic essentiality—the triad of teaching, learning, and testing—nothing can top e-learning platforms. Among early adopters were the higher-education institutions who proactively widened their availability by offering free, pre-recorded, web-based lectures to broad audiences, then doubled down on this commitment to convenience by providing paid, premium, live-streaming, virtual classes to remote learners who never would’ve had access otherwise, and finally closed the study/exam circle by leveraging proctoring, cheat deterrence, and authentication services.
The concept. Virtual classes provide continuity in education
Disprz needed to leverage real-time video as an essential component.
Training and
Coaching
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A provider of an AI-based enterprise skilling platform that helps employees accelerate their careers by daily upskilling and capability building, Disprz needed to leverage real-time video as an essential component. The Vonage Video API played a critical role in Disprz's ability to reliably scale its business and infuse its platform's features with robust functionality. One example is its collaborative whiteboard, which can deliver content—at scale, in any number of concurrent sessions—to over 2,000 participants per session.
Case study. Disprz: AI-based enterprise-learning and virtual-training platforms
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Digital training and coaching platforms have proven their versatility and efficiency in many sectors, including financial services, construction, logistics, manufacturing, and food service. When these platforms aren’t offering up fair-lending training to loan officers, they’re keeping electricians’ safety and compliance certifications current, conveying virtual, multi-plant training to manufacturing engineers, dishing up customer service instruction for food-service shift-workers, and more.
Use case. Group and 1:1 sessions between trainers and employees
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The now-classic corporate staple of on-demand training and coaching gets that interactive component it’s been missing with the addition of interactive video to its platforms, a feature that isn’t so critical for other mainstays like town-hall events and all-hands meetings, but is so critical for particularly interactive transactions like certification, accreditation, and licensure.
The concept. Providing employees the training they need to get the job done
But EdTech’s best developers know that just adding video isn’t enough. They know off-the-shelf video solutions won’t give their platforms the global availability, privacy, and security that built-for-purpose video APIs will.
How about you? Are you ready to create your own video-rich education experiences—within any mobile, web, or desktop application—on the WebRTC standard already supported by billions of devices?
That’s the education industry in 2020, and its adoption of distance learning systems and real-time video is a major factor why.
Disrupted, upended, and redefined,
but perhaps improved, too.
Visit vonage.com/communications-apis/education today!
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