How to Choose the Right Online Video Platform for Education?

Videos enable educators to break down complex concepts into tiny, easy to learn, visually represented chunks. The brain responds to videos fast compared to text and other kinds of video course platform learning material. Online video platforms can help students feel like they’re back in school through classroom videos. In the current virtual school setup, video streaming platforms are no less than a blessing for educators and students. 

In a recent survey, 88 percent of universities admitted that video increases student achievement levels. Amid the COVID-19 outbreak, online learning is playing a significant role in people’s lives. Video platforms have started gaining traction due to the shift from traditional classes to online classes. Several education institutions are leveraging the power of video platforms to enhance the learning experience. Let’s deep dive and find out the benefits of video learning platforms for students and educators. 

“According to Statista, in K-12 classrooms, the most commonly used online learning materials are online educational videos, software, and apps.”

What is an Educational Video Platform?

With the growth of online social connectivity and economic developments, education is transitioning from brick-and-mortar classrooms to rich media online learning platforms. The shift has been influenced by greater worldwide internet access, increased mobile devices, technological advancements, ease of accessibility, and content delivery for teachers and students.

An educational video platform is a website or online service that provides videos designed to educate users on a particular topic. The platform can offer a variety of videos on different topics and subjects. Many educational video platforms also provide additional features, such as quizzes, study materials, ebooks, and tests, to help users learn more effectively and calculating their grades. An education video platform can be both free and paid.

Videos have now become an integral part of learning and teaching habits. Educational videos are more effective, engaging, and readily available and are now the primary medium of online learning and education. Video production has become much easier with the availability of dedicated platforms to make online education available globally.

Types of Video Platforms

Public Video Platforms

Videos on online public platforms are available for a mass audience, and anyone can watch and share them. The video publisher has no direct control over how the content is shared and distributed. These video platforms are mostly free with limitations like the number of video uploads. Public video platforms are a great option to reach large audiences and brand presence.

Internal or Private Video Platforms

Unlike public video platforms, private video platforms are meant for videos containing private information and not for a general audience. Teams and organizations often use these to send and receive video content. The video publisher has complete control over how the video content is accessed.

Video-on-Demand Platforms

VOD or Video-on-Demand platforms provide video content from an online content library covering different content genres. Unlike traditional broadcasts, VOD viewers can choose what to see and when to see it at their convenience. Popular VOD platforms include Netflix, Hulu, and other online streaming services.

Training Based Video platforms

Big organizations and companies have their own in-house video platform where employee training programs are available. These platforms have restrictive sharing, and no content is available outside the organization. Often the content visibility is limited even within the organization. The video content type includes mandatory compliance training and the latest technological advancements.

Live Streaming Video Platforms

The video is streamed in real-time, i.e., recorded and broadcasted simultaneously. Examples include Facebook Live, or World Cup live streaming. The audience can even engage and give real-time feedback, comments, polls, and more.

Video Hosting Platforms

Video hosting platforms host and manage video content. The videos are hosted on the hosting provider’s server and are easily embeddable on third-party sites for viewing and sharing. Viewers can watch the content either on the video hosting site or embed the video on their own website.

Online video hosting service simplifies the hosting process and eliminates the bandwidth and storage costs associated with self-hosting. These video hosting sites offer additional features such as video analytics, smart player, adaptive bitrate streaming, DRM encryption for security against video piracy, and much more. One such popular video hosting platform is VdoCiper, which offers secure video hosting with Hollywood Grade DRM Encryption and other features.

Key Benefits of an Online Video Platform for Education

Video offers a go-to resource that students can watch from anywhere with an internet connection. Since online video platforms are accessible on several devices, people can learn on the go. Video platforms allow students to learn at their convenience and from wherever they are.

Easy brushup

Help learn Learners can stop and resume the videos on online video platforms as many times as they need. Even if you feel like you cannot recall any concept, just a few clicks can help you brush up the concept again. 

Practical learning

Students can learn by seeing the step-by-step procedures that help them problem-solve and learn science and math formulas in no time. In short, video learning software adds life to the course material by engaging and interactive for learners.

Remove geographical barrier: 

Video platforms enable teachers to create a flipped classroom, making students feel that they are in a traditional classroom. It also removes the geographical barrier and helps teachers reach students from all over the world.

Analytics to track students :

The analytical features of video platforms enable teachers to track student engagement and attendance using helpful analytics. Educators can track which student is viewing the video for how much time. It helps them measure the effectiveness of video on students. 

More convincing

Since many things like text, animations, sound, images used in video content, it became easy for learners to learn and retain content for a longer time. 

LMS integration 

You can integrate videos into the institution’s learning management system (LMS) to give an additional resource for students and teachers. It helps students learn at their own pace and brush up their knowledge whenever they need it. 

These are only some of the key benefits of using an online video platform for education. If you are an educator or a course creator, investing in an online video platform is wise. However, you need to figure out which video platform is suitable for your student, teachers, and teaching method. To help you out, we have created a list of things you should consider before investing in an online video platform. 

One-To-One Tutoring and Lecture Capture

The online learning platforms should allow teachers to interact with their students personally. The platform must allow educators to record and store lectures or classes so that students can use them later to brush up on key concepts.

Custom Integration with Top LMSs

LMS Integration helps educators streamline video production and grading. A good video platform integrates well with LMSs through Learning Tools Interoperability (LTI) technology standards. 

Flipped Classroom and Social Sharing Platforms Integration

In video learning platforms, students should be able to learn courses at their own pace. If you integrate the video platform with a social sharing platform, students can interact with the system across platforms, allowing students to put theory to practice.

Frequent Assessments Can Reduce Distractions

Your video platform should have frequent assessment features to help students reduce their distractions and keep them focused on the syllabus. 

All-Device Compatibility Adaptive Streaming

Make sure your video platform choice is compatible with multiple devices and seamlessly stream videos with available bandwidth. It ensures a better learning experience across the board.

Multiple Deployment Options

Your video platform should offer different deployment options like on-premise servers or on a hybrid system of the two. It provides you to choose whichever option suits you best.

High-Quality Content Delivery

Your video platform should have high-quality videos and should not buffer. Regardless of the number of users, the video quality should be high and give a smooth experience.

Multiple Monetization Models

Your video platform should enable you to switch between options like pay-as-you-use, subscription-based, or hybrid. Having multiple monetization models helps you use your video software as per the predefined budget. 

Insight into Video Viewership and Engagement Analytics

Your video platform should identify its audience and engagement numbers to help you make better content overall. The analytics present in your video platform helps identify which video is performing better, what topics are gaining the most popularity. 

Content Security/DRM Protection

Your online video platform must-have features to protect your data and privacy. In simple language, it should have high-end DRM-based video encryption.

These are some of the things you should keep in mind before investing in an online video platform. Since several proficient video platforms are available in the market, you need to do your research and choose a video platform that suits your needs and budget. 

How to Implement Video Security on your Educational Platform?

The use of video in learning has benefited the students, teachers, institutions, and the entire online learning ecosystem. There is rising demand for high-value videos and online course offerings amid the rising competition among educational platforms. With such high demand, securing the videos from hackers and piracy is definitely needed.

An unsecured premium video is downloaded to be freely available on the web within seconds. This leads to not only video piracy but also significant revenue loss. The major copyright abuse cases include password sharing, copyright infringement, content downloading, screen capture, and much more. A secure video security system must-have features such as secure authentication, encryption, access control, and managing users’ access and permissions.

Over 2500 business customers from over 40 countries, especially e-learning and media websites and apps, rely on VdoCipher for secure video hosting. VdoCipher offers Hollywood Grade DRM Encrypted video streaming similar to what platforms like Netflix use to secure video content. Videos streamed via our platform cannot be illegally downloaded or shared by any online software or plugins.

The security features we offer which make us the most popular choice for secure video hosting are:

Video DRM Encryption

Many popular video encryption platforms use HLS Encryption with AES-128, Dash, and RTMPE, which have security flaws. One is partial video encryption, and the other is an open key exchange mechanism. The entire video stream is encrypted with a hidden or non-public key exchange mechanism in DRM encryption. The procedure involves Widevine and Apple FairPlay DRM. Since the encryption key is protected, no hackers Google can pirate the video, and only authorized users can access the video.

Dynamic Watermarking To Discourage Screen Capture

Watermarking is the method of placing some piece of text or your logo onto your video or document to make it copyright protected. If someone illegally circulates your video online, it becomes easy to identify it as yours. Often pirates capture the screen and republish the video claiming it as theirs. By adding watermarks, screen capture is discouraged. We provide dynamic watermarking to display the username, user email, and user IP. The watermarks are customizable for movement, color, and transparency.

Smart HTML5 Player

Streaming your videos with our multi-device smart HTML5 video player gives the best viewing experience with customizable features. We provide Adaptive Bitrate Streaming. It means even HD videos can be streamed at low bitrates, and viewers can easily access them without buffering, even at low internet speeds. The player features include multi-language subtitle support, player themes, playback speed controls, custom overlay and tracking, video analytics, and secure offline downloads in Android.

Android SDK for security on mobile devices

VdoCipher android SDK lets you download videos offline to be stored locally on Android devices. It includes API to Download media assets to local storage, track and manage download progress and fetch available download options for a video in the dashboard. To initialize video playback, OTP is generated. There is also the option to limit the time period for offline video playback.

Plugins For WordPress & Moodle

Integrating the VdoCipher WordPress video hosting plugin lets you stream videos on your WordPress site with the best possible content protection. The plugin installation is pretty straightforward and works well with all popular CMS.

AWS-powered server and CDN

The video content is securely hosted on Amazon AWS S3 servers. It adds a double protection layer with server-side video encryption technology. With CDN, the video content is smoothly delivered without issues like buffering, latency, delay in page loading, or poor video quality.

Top online video education platforms

Below, we will discuss the top video platform for education;

VdoCipher+LMS

The first one in our list of VdoCipher. It allows you to create and stream e-learning videos on your course securely and smoothly. You can integrate the video player with your website or app portal hassle-free. 

When you combine VdoCipher with any LMS platform, you will get- WordPress-based LMSes. WordPress LMS provides you with an interface to quickly build a course website. It helps you create courses, track students’ progress, take quizzes and help monitor subscription and subscription models. Also, it ensures video protection from piracy with help of Hollywood Grade DRM encryption.

Video platform for educations often tend to lose out on their revenue due to piracy. Vdocipher’s hollywood grade video protection ensures that you don’t lose revenue due to piracy. 

Vdocipher Features

• Multi DRM Support to prevent videos from download
• Screen Record Prevention on iOS and Android Apps
• In-depth video analytics (e.g., number of views, viewer behavior)
• Device Compatibility (Desktop, Android , IOS)
• Content management features like uploading/importing videos, configure security settings, customise thumbnail via simple dashboard

Teachable

The second one on our list is Teachable. You can use this simple solution for uploading content, customizing your virtual school, and help educators interact with students. It also offers the best online learning platforms for marketing your course as you have the option to sell your systems as a standalone product or in bundles.

It comes with an option to enable or disable that file for student downloading. Teachable has procedures for encrypted transmission and storage of sensitive information.

You can fully customize your class and get payments as well. You will have the opportunity to choose the payment plan, charge a one-time fee, or allow your audience to subscribe to the course. Here’s a short comparison of Teachable with other popular video platforms like Teachable vs Kajabi

It comes with an option to enable or disable that file for student downloading. Teachable has procedures for encrypted transmission and storage of sensitive information.

Features

• Unlimited video bandwidth, unlimited courses and coaching services on all paid plans
• It offers native integrations 
• Synchronous Learning
• Easy to use platform. In a quick time you can create an online course, including curriculum and media. 

Kajabi

The third one on our list is Kajabi. If you are a busy course creator and want to sell your courses, Kajabi is the right platform. You can also create sales funnel, landing pages, sales pages, webinar pages, and much more. You will also have access to tools for course launches and more within a few clicks. In short, it is a content management system that helps you automate the entire marketing task of your video course. If you’re looking to compare Kajabi with other LMS platforms, we’ve got you covered with a Kajabi vs Thinkific here.

Features

• It offers ready to use templates
• 24/7 Chat Support
• Analytics can be tracked on your site with metrics like Net Revenue, Subscription Metrics, Page Views
• Option to integrate quizzes & surveys

Proctor

Proctor offers ready-to-launch solutions to sell videos online, conduct exams, and more. It is a purely Indian company with an affluent customer base from India. It is an end-to-end solution for educational video streaming solution to help institutions or individuals publish their e-learning videos online. You will have features like fees management and admission management tools to conduct online quizzes in Proctor, etc. 

Vimeo

Vimeo offers a clean interface for selling your online video courses. It is a video streaming platform that provides both- streaming and video hosting services in one place. However, you need to buy their premium subscription to access basic live streaming functionality. You can use their proprietary hardware and software for live streaming videos. 

Features

• Privacy feature includes password protection, viewer permissions
• Easily organize, share, and make bulk changes to everything from embed settings to licensing.
• It allows viewers to speed up or slow down videos 
• Supports user friendly streaming solutions with high quality video 4K Ultra HD
• Flexible storage options are provided

Panopto

Panopto is a video content management system primarily serving businesses and colleges across the globe. Using this video platform, you can manage, live stream, record, and share video content online in one place. 

Pinetop markets itself as a lecture capture system that offers flexibility to record any size and provides complete control over the entire video recording infrastructure.

Panopto platform does not offer video monetization features. The security features are also limited.

Features

• Video CMS integrates with single sign-on (SSO) ID management solutions including Google Apps, oAuth, SAML, and Active Directory
• Live webcasting and Live-stream screen video recording
• You can easily create playlists, optimize playback and measure viewer engagement
• It makes video more accessible by automatically adding text captions to videos using the built-in Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) feature

Thinkific

Thinkific offers a full-fledged video platform for education where you can create, deliver, and market and sell your video courses on your website. You can use their range of predefined templates like mini-course, digital download, webinar replay, etc., to design studying video courses. It is a cloud-based learning management system (LMS) to help course creators build and launch their video courses. You can also do a Thinkific vs Teachable before getting started as both are equally good and close competitors.

Features

• Interactive video quizzes, engagement surveys, assignments
• In-depth reporting to track student’s progress
• Built-in content creation tools
• Option to Embed 3rd party tools and sites

Conclusion

These are the top-notch video platform for education. Several educational institutions are already using the power of video platforms to make their learning easier simpler for both teachers and students. Make sure to choose a video platform that puts students and teachers and makes education an enlightening and holistic experience for everyone. If you are looking to start using a video platform for education, then NOW is the right time to start. Here we have compared for you the 3 most popular video platforms currently i.e. Teachable vs Thinkific vs Kajabi

FAQs

What are some points to consider when using free video platforms for education?

Firstly, it is important to ensure that the videos are appropriate for the age and learning level of the students. Secondly, the videos must be high-quality and informative with easy accessibility.

Are there any disadvantages of online education?

To some, online education seems less personal than traditional education. There is also a risk of not receiving a high-quality education if the chosen online program is not accredited.

What is meant by an Interactive video platform?

An interactive video platform can be a tool, app, or platform where the learner can perform some form of action on the videos. The interaction can be a click, responses, quizzes, polls, in-video shopping, branching storylines, and more.