Chief among the benefits the Internet has afforded is the democratization of access to learning. We are no longer constrained in acquiring or disseminating knowledge. From simple how-to-videos on YouTube to advanced neuroscience coursework through MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) there has been an explosion in the availability of professional information.
In parallel, the student population is no longer just 18-year olds in college but spans the demographic spectrum. Returning veterans, single mothers, part-time workers, hobbyists and life-long learners all are target audiences
Today every major university and corporate training department is engaged in digital endeavors to furnish education programs to students and stakeholders. Harvard’s HBX, Wharton Online, MIT’s Open Courseware are good examples. Additionally, we are witnessing the proliferation and maturation of an array of virtual classroom settings for learning like Coursera, Great Courses, Udemy, EdX, and Khan Academy. All these avenues are incorporating technologically sophisticated mechanisms to increase viewer and student interaction. As one of my daughter’s heads to William & Mary in the fall and another contemplates choices for college, I have no doubt in my mind that their collegiate learning experience will be radically interactive and hyper-connected compared to my own experience just a few decades ago. From complete virtual classrooms to live streaming of lectures, new approaches to education will help them explore the world differently and execute the learning process in new ways. Core to all their experiences, will be the use of visual information and visual technology.
While textual documentation and e-books have played an important role in easing the distribution of knowledge and education over the Internet, they have been no match to high-quality video in making e-learning fun, intuitive and effective. Visual media, unlike any other medium, has the power to captivate audiences and simultaneously deliver highly effective communications. As enterprises and institutions aim to reach audiences large and small, creative formulations for visual impact having become pre-requisite. As a life-long pursuer of new learning, I find these new approaches extremely helpful in helping busy people like myself keep up with changes in our business and industry and absorb even relatively complex concepts with ease. Ultimately, visual tools are deepening the learning process by helping the learner grasp the application of the concepts in ways that were not possible before.
With online education, synthetic yet seamless mixing of video, CGI content and audio effects are now mainstay in any effective education program. To further enhance audience experiences, integrating webcasting and live streaming is now gaining popularity. Several new platforms are emerging to help in the production of high-quality visual content. More important than the content itself is an emphasis on searchability, ease of content creation and management, and good user interface for both mobile and desktop devices. Faced with all these profound changes, aging IT systems at academic institutions can barely keep up. IT systems, besides providing a seamless integrated learning ecosystem, must be resilient and thwart advanced cyber threats.
To compete and succeed in the hypercompetitive online-education markets, academia need robust, scalable and cost-effective IT solutions. Arrow’s acquisition of Seneca was conceived to solve this exact need and Seneca today combines leading-edge IT solutions that include digital media hardware with visual media solutions. Arrow partners like Panopto are leading the innovation in the visual content capture/management space. The Seneca Scribe appliances certified by Panopto are part of the rich solutions portfolio available to our education and corporate segment customers. Every quarter I experience the power of these solutions first hand, as the Arrow global leadership teams utilize them for our face-to-face meetings.
Learning today is no longer constrained by location and will be more about purpose and outcomes. With emerging technologies like virtual reality (VR) and new teaching approaches using gamification, the next generation learning experience will be more real and practical than ever before. Students will have unprecedented insights without ever stepping into a classroom.
There is no doubt that a future online campus depends on connectivity and collaboration enabled by new visual media solutions.
