Video on Demand (VOD) services are ideally positioned to expand the reach of quality education and even help subsidise the cost of education.
“On-demand is not just for entertainment,” says Stephen Watson, MD of South African video on demand solutions provider, Discover Digital.
“Education is one of the most exciting opportunities of streamed content. The social upliftment that can result from broader access to education is huge. With live streaming and on-demand video content, every school could have access to the best maths teachers. And in tertiary institutions, live streaming and archived lecture videos would ensure that students who missed classes could catch up on their lectures.”
Watson notes that advanced video on demand platforms allow for customisation and revenue generation through subscriptions, sponsorship and advertising models, which could contribute to the cost of education. “We could build a white labelled VOD solution that would allow universities to combine archived content that could be accessed as part of a subscription or as part of the fee, including the ability to do live streaming that automatically gets archived as a VOD play.
“What’s more, we could use analytics to give feedback on exactly who watched that, so if part of the criteria was that you had to attend the lecture, attendance could be tracked.” Students could access the content using zero rated data or free wifi hotspots, potentially reducing the cost of attendance.
“Properly packaged, VOD could go a long way to reducing the cost of delivering education. We have designed our technology solutions, licensing and business operations to be able to offer very flexible models including opex and revenue share models,” says Watson.
As a full-service, on demand solutions provider, Discover Digital is looking to offer new content aggregation services and platforms that will allow public sector organisations, health services, sporting bodies, companies and individuals to manage and monetise their own content, for select or broad audiences.
“Corporates are also looking seriously at VOD and saying it’s not just a consumer play for access to entertainment. There are a huge number of corporate business opportunities to create more effective and personalised VOD solutions where corporates can offer their stakeholders an opportunity to catch up on market intelligence, the CEO’s results statements, speeches and other points of interest and then archive that content. We also see an opportunity to create an environment that allows corporates, artists, coaches and others to curate and monetise their own video content,” says Watson.
