In the past year and half I’ve experienced first-hand the...

In the past year and half I’ve experienced first-hand the disruption in the way lectures are taught to university students, as the industry is forced away from on campus learning to other ways of learning that protect the wider public.

In short, universities have 2 choices:

1. Professors pre-record lecture videos and upload them each week
2. Professors teach live in real time via Zoom

It’s been a life changing experience for both students and professors.

The question is whether this change is permanent or will things return back to normal after the virus subsides, or will the world change its approach to living with the virus?

Personally, I enjoy the buzz of on campus life. I assumed the students did too, however from what I’ve learned from conversations with hundreds of students, this is not a unanimous opinion.

In fact, there is a meaningful percentage of students who have not only adapted to these new ways of learning, but have embraced it as the future of learning; we are talking serious students, students who really care.

This comes as a surprise. In the past, online universities have been looked down upon as 2^nd rate, sometimes even dubious, and easy to pass.

Now we can see universities are required to shift their thinking out of necessity; an attitudinal shift for both learners and now learning institutions.

How does this affect Linius?

Imo, it opens the door to a global revenue opportunity. Few opportunities scale like university students; the TAM is enormous. Sure Linius has tried before to grab this opportunity and failed.

So why might it be different this time?

The need for Linius’ university product offering has come to reality - and it's growing.

Previously, the amount of educational material that was recorded on videos or via Zoom was scarce. Students relied on books, written lecture notes, and audio-taped recordings of lectures - not videos. The videos simply did not exist beyond online universities.

The video resource base has grown quickly as a result of lockdowns and will continue to grow. My own video base has grown from nothing 2 years ago to more than a hundred videos and counting. How big it will grow depends upon the virus, and so far the virus is winning.

For most students, video learning at a time of their choosing is more interesting than losing concentration during a long and challenging lecture at 9:00am. But it’s much more than that. The ability to pause and rewind improves learning outcomes. Students are benefitting and this is the key.

I’d also posit, most students absorb more learning from a video than from reading a book or sitting through lectures. Ask yourself how much more effectively you’ve learned since switching to watching videos about the global economy or fixing something around the home versus reading books on it?

How does Linius add value to this new way of learning?

This is where it gets really interesting. There may be only a few aspects from the lectures that the student needs to review say before her mid-term or final exams. Currently, she needs to manually go back to each lecture involving these aspects, find the exact spot – which may take some finding – then watch and locate the next video and repeat.

Or, she could let Linius do the work for her for one sacrificed coffee a month or less.

Linius provides her a cheap, time saving and effective review tool to further improve her learning outcomes.

Maybe the finished product is not as slick as SwanBay’s Wolves efforts, but the student is not expecting an NBC Sports style highlight package of the lecture. Her goal is to be educated, not entertained.

Perhaps the hold up on a contract so far comes down to who owns the copyright to the videos, professors or universities? This is a hidden issue and may make negotiations between universities and Linius a little tricky until a solution is reached.

It’s likely the professor (for now at least) does in most cases, but as Linius does not store the videos, but can access them only if allowed, it’s my view that generally professors would be willing for currently enrolled students to access those videos with Linius to improve their students' learning outcomes.

If a big name university signs with Linius I expect the snowball effect to begin, for which university wants to be left behind in better learning outcomes when it’s what they are selling?

GLTAH

FWIW, I did not participate in this raise, these thoughts are my own, and I am speculating that Linius will take off in university education globally. I’m convinced online learning is here to stay in at least a hybrid form with on campus learning. The easy money is off the table for now, and there are a lot of shares that will hit the market from the raise if the news flow is weak, so invest carefully and always DYOR.