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The Next Revolution In Global eLearning

Forbes Technology Council
POST WRITTEN BY
Chris Richardson

In today’s always-on world, the value of knowledge has increased and the way we get it has changed. eLearning -- the direct access of information by technology -- is one of the most vibrant and promising new businesses on the global market, one poised to reach approximately $331 billion by 2025. A new era is dawning for eLearning with the power of video virtualization and artificial intelligence (AI) technology, enabling it to be the most compelling new way to improve our minds, lives and society.

Swimming In A Sea Of Content

Video drives eLearning with a tsunami of digital content from recorded lectures to step-by-step instructional products. Cisco forecasts that over 82% of internet traffic will be video by 2021, growing at a rapid 31% CAGR. Videos are the most valuable assets in the world of online learning and knowing what you have and protecting it is of utmost importance.

YouTube videos have created an idea of socialized and peer learning. Demand is evident with high-profile deals being made, like LinkedIn’s acquisition of leading learning platform Lynda.com. Manuals are a thing of the past. Now when consumers want instruction on how to change the oil in their car or code a website, they turn to the internet.

Technology’s Role In Education

Video content owners expect to maintain and control the ownership of video assets while safely maximizing the reach to customers and subsequently, monetizing the content effectively. This is where technology is critical to managing vast video libraries. Around 78% of associations that provide online learning use a Learning Management System (LMS) or Digital Asset Management (DAM) provider to deal with the back-end complexities of giant content libraries. These systems manage, protect and deliver all these assets for higher education. Some DAM companies such as Canto, Extensis and MediaAMP have customer bases as large as 45 schools, including major universities such as University of Washington, Arizona State University, Central Washington University and the University of California.

The higher education sector also has seen a steady adoption of eLearning as online degrees have gained popularity. Nearly a third of higher education students are enrolled in an online class, reaching over 6.3 million students nationally in 2016.

Online learning is not only for those who want to learn a language or broaden personal skill sets. Businesses, schools and even government organizations have adopted and embraced eLearning models for compliance training, continuing education and certification, as well as higher degree programs. In fact, according to Edgepoint Learning, 40% of Fortune 500 companies use eLearning for professional development with over 72% of American organizations believing eLearning gives them a competitive advantage. Professionals from various industries such as public safety, law and medicine who once had to travel to different conferences, lectures or courses to clock hours for certification can now tune in via webinars and lectures from their home.

But while all of that is true, learning from video is still problematic. Have you ever tried to search video? You can search for videos based on the description of the video as a whole, but trying to find specific content inside of a video -- the way you could in a book --  is practically impossible. The next step is key. The world of big data has already conquered the notion of data virtualization. Extending that concept to video, virtualizing the raw video data and exposing it, will allow the advances we’re seeing in AI and machine learning to be applied to video down to the frame level. Crossing this threshold, making the raw video data accessible to machines, is the missing link for cloud service providers to connect data between tools and artificial intelligence and to customize and monetize videos quickly.

The Impact Of Video Virtualization

Extracting and virtualizing the data in video maximizes the value of the existing video assets by enabling people to immediately get to the information they want within a video archive with a quick cognitive video search.

AI is made relevant through video virtualization by turning every frame of video and spoken word into a data set to be cataloged by cognitive search and AI providers. This technology can solve piracy woes, build in payment gateways and customizable security keys, in addition to solving the search problem.

AI enables spoken words to be instantaneously transcribed for accurate closed captioning, opening online video education to all students, including individuals who are deaf and/or hard of hearing. Machine learning can be used to teach the AIs to recognize specific objects. Once that data -- more properly, metadata -- is attached to assets at the frame level, the virtualization of the assets allows viewers to extract only the pieces they need. Imagine a student who has just come out of a class, where there was one particular topic he didn’t understand. If you can access every video and search it for content and then return a virtual video containing only the data a student needs, then with a simple search he could quickly be watching a customized tutorial on just that topic, from all the different recordings of professors and lecturers at the school. Such advancements and innovations are not only important for maximizing the value of video assets but could also prevent costly company crises such as those Harvard, MIT and UC Berkeley faced due to lack of closed captioning and management of online learning materials.

The application of AI and the virtualization of video data are just coming into sight on the horizon. The impact of this will be larger than we can guess, and as the necessary technology emerges it will create a new world of education, data retrieval and the dissemination of ideas. It also will give rise to new questions about identity and privacy.

The Next Revolution In eLearning Is Coming.

We watch sci-fi movies all the time where a character asks a computer to teach them something. “Hi Siri, teach me about the Higgs boson.” A future where you can do exactly that and get a custom generated video that gives you exactly the information you need is coming sooner than you think.

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