LMS-driven Learning is Far Better Than Youtube Videos: Why?

During the last 2 to 3 years, majority of the business professionals, coaching centers, or individual teachers have been using Youtube extensively to share their knowledge. They primarily create videos and cater to their audience. But the most emphatic question remains unanswered: how good and effective is Youtube-based learning or teaching?

Youtube is basically a video delivery system that helps upload your videos and spread them to wider audience. It has some functionality of editing and little bit of data collection. Youtube content is just videos. On the other hand, an LMS is an entirely different system specially designed for the delivery of (rather serious or academic) learning content much more organized than that is delivered (in the form of videos) on Youtube, and the content on an LMS is not just limited to videos. In addition to videos, it can deliver content in variety of formats like interactive SCORM modules, quizzes, assignments, simple web-pages, collaborative worksheets, activities, and much more.

On Youtube, generally less than 40% of learners can really go through the academic or serious content without getting distracted. Many factors cause the distractions on youtube. The first reason for distraction on Youtube is the video-delivery itself. Generally a video has a non-stop delivery of content for 20 to 30 minutes. Very few learners can listen (and watch) to such a non-stop content delivery (with the complete attention) for 10 to 30 minutes because many learners have very less attention and retention span. Most learners on Youtube doze off or get frozen by the non-stop nature of video-delivery. In a real classroom delivery, the speaker or presenter generally asks questions and elicit responses from the learners after he or she discusses an idea or a set of ideas. This helps absorption or retention at a higher level. But this is not possible with the Youtube videos. Youtube videos don’t pause in between and don’t ask the learners about their responses, but this kind of interactivity is possible in an LMS. You can make such a delivery that can stop in between and ask a question to the learners and learners can record their responses and the delivery continues. In this way, the content delivery makes the learners’ “active” and not “passive” as found in the case of Youtube audience. Basically, the LMS content can interact with the learners, but the Youtube content can’t.

The next important point is about the learner action data: There is no system available on youtube that captures and evaluates the learner’s learning journey. When a learner watches a video, there is no system in place that can display the trainer that their videos were “completely” understood or “partially” understood by the learners. The trainers on Youtube can not deliver questions to the learners to check their understanding or to assess their knowledge following the delivery.

One more aspect is about evaluation of learner’s activity. A Youtube channel does not provide a mechanism to capture the detailed analysis of the learners’ actions. However, an LMS can display the learner’s progress much more clearly such as, the time taken by the learner to complete a learning module, the level of learner’s understanding of the content, learner’s performance over a period of time, comparative analysis of learners content consumption etc.

The last aspect is about showcasing your online courses. Show-casing your courses on Youtube is complicated. Finding the sequence of videos or playlists becomes elusive many times. You can display all your online courses in the most systematic way on your LMS. The modules that you have already taken or learned disappear from your module list. In addition to this, an LMS offers many other functionalities that enable you to sell and promote your courses at ease.