The Benefits of Video Streaming for Education

There is a growing body of research into the benefits of video as part of the education process, at schools and in colleges. To quote just one example, a survey conducted by Kaltura found that 93% of respondents – educators and students – believed that video has a positive impact on student satisfaction, and 88% agree that it boosts student achievement levels.

That is perhaps not surprising. We are used to video as the source of information on a whole range of subjects. Away from education, we are all familiar with streamed video. Consumption of OTT streaming – video content sent “over the top” of the internet – has grown exponentially during the pandemic.

The obvious next step is that educational bodies should be streaming video for their students. You can live stream lectures, classroom lessons and practical sessions. You can pre-package specialist content. The platform can be used for school news and information. And, in the age of popular short-form video clips like Tik-Tok, you can encourage active and interactive feedback from students.

The opportunities are great. The challenges, though, are obvious. You need good security to ensure that only registered students can see the material. There are safe-guarding issues if other students are visible in the videos, and you have to ensure protection.

You will also want to protect your original content, and ensure that videos provided by other producers are only used in accordance with the terms of your licence.

So your video streaming platform will need to encompass DRM – digital rights management, which takes care of the intellectual property – and CRM – customer (or students, in this case) relationship management. CRM will need to include registration, and ensuring that the user interface presents the most relevant content to each registered user: if the student is studying English literature there is no point presenting them with sessions on computational fluid dynamics.

You may also want to extend your educational television service to include scheduled “broadcasts” online, like a traditional television channel. Again, you need a fully automated system that will switch the correct content online at precisely the right time, and if necessary present other material or holding graphics when there is no live streamed content.

But perhaps the most important requirement is that all this should take as little management time and effort as possible, with the highest degree of automation. The object is to add value to the educational process, so operators should be able to focus on being teachers not television engineers.

The answers to all these questions (and more) can be found in the OTT Platform from PlayBox Technology. The company has been a trusted vendor of automated and integrated playout systems for television broadcasters for more than 15 years, and has become a market leader in all-in-one solutions. All that skill, knowledge and experience is now available for streamed video services, including video on demand and live streaming channels.

All of the technology is implemented in virtualised software, capable of running on standard PC hardware in your college or in the cloud. The advantage of cloud software is that users can access it from anywhere to manage the service, add content and modify schedules.

Derived from broadcast playout software, quality is guaranteed, both in seamless operation and in delivering the best video and audio. Typically OTT for education will run in HD, but if you have content that demands 4k Ultra HD that can be supported.

Graphics and captions are simple to create, using tools built into the software, or standard graphics packages. You can create templates which are automatically populated. For scheduled broadcasts, you create a playlist by dragging and dropping, then everything is delivered automatically, running 24/7 without any operator intervention once the playlist is set.

Benjamin Franklin is quoted as saying “Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.” Video is a powerful way to involve students, bringing the material alive in front of them. An education streaming platform is the critical step in delivering content to students, when they need it, wherever they are.