Those of you who follow my writing know that I’m extremely passionate about learning. Through my academic research and teaching at various institutions around the world, I subscribe to traditional ways of learning and working, but I am also a passionate believer that education needs to be available to all – and often this is far from the case.
I was excited to catch up with Gauthier Van Malderen, CEO and cofounder of Perlego, to dive into how his company is helping fix what he sees as a “broken system” with a simple solution. Not so long ago the founders, Gauthier and Matt, were students struggling to pay for textbooks – a situation which has led some students to turn to piracy.
Gauthier Van Malderen, CEO and co-founder of Perlego
It is clear that many universities were not fully for the pandemic – and university life is very different to what anyone could have predicted a year ago.
“Listening to students' experiences and speaking to universities, it quickly became apparent that the industry was not prepared for this sudden shift towards remote learning we experienced last year, and the current crisis has left students and lecturers in an impossible position,” said Gauthier. “Basic things, such as access to material and collaborating with friends is just not possible”
With the sudden need to implement effective digital learning strategies, many traditional industries that support education are suffering.
“Students and the publishing industry are paying the price, with pirated material going through the roof and stories of students not being able to find the core material they need to finish their coursework.”
So, with so many challenges facing universities in reacting to the new demands of remote learning, many lecturers were also blindsided by the shift to remote working – and this has seen a substantial increase in academic piracy.
Remote Digital Learning
“With two-thirds of university lecturers saying they didn’t think their establishment was completely prepared for an academic year of ‘blended learning’, the biggest concern was access to material while working remotely. 79% of lecturers we spoke to said that their students struggled to access the content they needed while working remotely in the first lockdown, and sadly this hasn’t changed despite the U.K. entering more national lockdowns. The majority (82%) of university lecturers are telling me they have shared PDFs or photocopied pages, which are potentially illegal, with their students to help ease the pressure on their studies due to educational libraries being shut across the country.”
A rising issue is the prevalence of the use of pirated books, and something will have to be done to protect the publishing industry. Gauthier sees the solution lying in using digital technology to open up access to legal content and making the material affordable for all, not only to support students, but also to recognize the important work of publishers and help to bring the industry back to growth.
“Traditional publishers have been reluctant to adopt a digital strategy, as proven by the fact that within a £160 billion industry, only 3% is digital, but to truly open up access, we need to see an acceleration towards digital services in education alongside a quicker delivery of printed material.”
However, with such significant disruption, traditional proponents of the education sector may ask what benefits digitalisation may offer to them. In fact, the true prize may be unprecedented access to data and understanding on the consumption of their content.
“By transitioning to a digital access-based model, publishers will be able to better understand how their material is being used through the new data they will receive. Their current focus on ownership models only shows them how many people bought the e-book, whereas through an access-based model, publishers will be able to see a breakdown of reading time down to the individual page, which will in turn help inform a fairer pricing structure and better curated content for the future.”
As we emerge from the pandemic, we will perhaps see a transition to blended approaches of learning, and digital will continue to grow in importance and influence. For all the negativity of the Covid-19 pandemic, perhaps with the publishing industry adopting a more global solution, more traditionally impacted territories such as Africa and India can also benefit from improved access to learning material and become core to a publisher's strategy.
