Mobiles becoming favourite education medium for Indians: Vuclip survey

Vuclip  has launched its new mobile video channel, edu. (edu.vuclip.com), an education portal, at One Globe 2013, the annual conference focused on building a 21st century knowledge economy in India and South Asia. Initially, the channel will provide educational videos for K-12 and higher education, which can be watched on any of the 5500 different types of internet-enabled mobile phones, including the most basic to the most advanced handsets. The channel currently supports educational videos in English but will include course material in other languages as well.

In its debut version, the portal will provide free access to thousands of educational videos from Khan Academy, the world’s premier not-for-profit education organization that offers free micro-lectures teaching mathematics, history, healthcare, medicine, finance, physics, chemistry, biology, astronomy, economics, computer science and other subjects. To date, Khan Academy has delivered over 234 million lessons worldwide.

Dr. Nickhil Jakatdar, CEO and founder of Vuclip, who was an invited speaker at One Globe 2013 during a spotlight session, also unveiled the findings of Vuclip’s global education survey. More than 80,000 people participated in this three day survey from around the world including countries such as India, Saudi Arabia, Philippines, Canada, Pakistan, United States, United Kindom, Indonesia, Nigeria, Mexico, UAE, Bangladesh, Malaysia, Brazil, Iran and several others.

Sharing details on the insights from India, Dr. Jakatdar said, “Almost 30% of all respondents from India were under 18 years, while 40% were between 18-25 years. More than half of respondents in India cited money as the biggest obstacle to getting an education of their choice. However, Indians are relatively more open to learning at home, with only 18% preferring to learn in a school, compared to the global average of 25% in favour of a school environment. At 82%, Indians are also more responsive to receiving education through phones, than the rest of the world (80%). This is true especially for respondents below 18 years of age.”

Indians prefer mobiles over computers as their choice of medium for education. Females prefer mobile twice as much as computers and males prefer mobile three times over computers. This was true across all age groups, though was more pronounced in respondents above 18 years of age.

As many as 70% males and 53% females in India said they were very interested in education through their phone, which again is above the global average, indicating a higher propensity to mobile-based education among Indians.

The top priority for males and females over the age of 18 was career development. Viewing all age groups, including the under 18 age bracket, the numbers show 36% of females and 30% of males as most interested in career development. However, 18% of females want to teach kids compared to just 9% males.

Dr. Jakatdar, who has over 30 patents to his credit, shared his vision for launching this new mobile channel for education, “Inclusive education is possible only when good and fresh educational content is universally and continually accessible through better discovery methods. Mobile video transcends all language barriers and can help democratize education. Vuclip today has more than 14 million active monthly users in India and this number is growing quickly. This is a readily available platform through which Indian universities and institutes can participate in making quality education accessible to the masses anywhere, anytime.”