Education sector could learn from Netflix
Justin Thomas
Back in the days of VHS video rentals there was often a short warning infomercial tagged onto the beginning of each tape. One memorable clip featured a series of petty crimes being committed. The misdemeanours were set to emotive music, with a gravelly voiced narrator making sweeping rhetorical assumptions about his audience: You wouldnt steal a purse! You wouldnt steal a car! You wouldnt break into a house. Then came the punchline: Video piracy is a crime. Dont do it. I could see his point and feel his angst, but I wasnt wholly convinced.
Academic dishonesty, plagiarism, copying on exams, buying essays and the many other ways students find to cheat present a problem very similar to that of video piracy or, as we might call it today, illegal downloading/file-sharing. Both activities represent misdeeds that have been around for millennia, in one form or another. However, in recent decades, information technology has massively facilitated the means of misconduct.
As new digital methods of hosting content arise, we change the way we consume it. Whether its a MOOC (massive online open course) or a series on Netflix, with greater availability comes the increased ability to consume more, faster. Most people know this as binging. Most peopleespecially if they only caught on to Game of Thrones during season 4have spent hours of their free time watching episode after episode.
We generally consider binging a bad thing, but a new study conducted by Wharton professors Eric Bradlow, J. Wesley Hutchinson, and doctoral candidate Tong Lu, suggests that binging content helps us learn better.
Their study examined students taking a class on Coursera, one of the most widely used online education platforms. They received and analyzed data regarding how quickly students in multiple different classes consumed each learning module and compared it to their performance in the class.
To begin, the researchers identified two different types of binging. The first is much like what someone might do with a Netflix series: they watch episode after episode or proceed through module after module in quick succession. They called this temporal binging. The other kind involves focusing on one subject intently. For example, a student might make it all the way through their marketing course before they begin history. They referred to this as content binging.
With 4.6 billion pieces of content produced daily, it might seem that our hunger for knowledge should be satisfied but information production and distribution is not the same as consumption and its not as simple as just putting information out there.
The problem is that we are drowning in content but are starving for knowledge and insights that can help us truly be more productive, collaborative and innovative.
When we want to acquire useful knowledge, we have to search the web broadly, find experts by word-of-mouth and troll through various poorly designed internal document sharing systems. This method is inefficient.
There should be a better solution that helps users find what they need. Such a solution would adapt to the users needs and learn how to make ongoing customised recommendations and suggestions through a truly interactive and impactful learning experience.
Before Netflix, Spotify, Reddit and similar curated content apps, you had to go to numerous sources to find the shows, music, news and other media you wished to view. Now, the entertainment and media you actually want to consume is easily discoverable and personalised to your interests. In many ways the entertainment model is a good framework for knowledge management and learning development applications.
The solution for the learning and development industry would be a platform that can make education more accessible and relevant something that allows us to absorb and spread knowledge seamlessly. Just as Netflix delivers entertainment we want at our fingertips, the knowledge and learning we need should be delivered where and when we need it.
The good news is that technologies are emerging to accomplish this. Using artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning, solutions can now aggregate, curate and personalise learning processes and content. After the researchers analyzed student learning patterns, they compared them to their grades. To their surprise, the students who binged did better than those who did not. Bradlow, furthermore, had research he conducted on consumer binging habits with Netflix and Hulu three years earlier. During that study, he found that binge consumers were more likely to become lifelong consumers. He was now able to draw a few conclusions:
[I]n our case on Coursera, Bradlow told the Knowledge@Wharton podcast, people who binge consume marketing and operations are more likely to complete their finance course. Theyre more likely to complete their accounting course. Just like we found in our work three years ago, it appears that binge consumption leads to higher customer lifetime value. That was the key takeaway. Weve just reinforced that and basically replicated that in an online educational content setting.
There are still a few questions left to be answered. For one, its difficult to determine which type of binging leads to better results. Many students participated in both temporal and content forms of binging. Others binged for a certain period before reverting to non-binging tactics. The study, furthermore, asked if binging helped the learning process, not why. That remains quite mysterious.
The writer is an Associate Professor
at Zayed University
