Blog:

Freedom Killed the Video Stars

Posted 20-Jun-2009 by Robby Slaughter (@robbyslaughter)

From my vantage point running a small business in Indiana, it’s impossible to avoid the tremendous array of “opportunities” for additional streams of income. Each is brazenly associated with an incredulous claim: healthy chocolate, superfood fruit juice, free jewelry or the existence of a subconscious blueprint in the millionaire mind. Given the number of programs and the persistence of their promoters, fairly evaluating each is a full-time job. That’s why I am taking on just one of these ventures. Here’s my report on iLearningGlobal.

The Value Proposition

Despite the temptation to immediately poke at the polished exterior of iLearningGlobal (hereafter iLG), I’ll start with claims presented on their websites. For $79.95 a month, you get access to about 500 videos plus a host of other types of content. The company promises to add 20-30 new clips each month. To preserve the iLG offering as of June 20, 2009 for all posterity, here’s a screenshot of their product page:

Some of those statements beg obvious questions. How many e-books are in their “growing e-book library?” What are the limitations of the “limited download section?” Do “weekly tele-conferences” allow iLG members to ask direct questions to iLG’s expert faculty? Even if the answers did not impress, the baseline offer is easy to capture: access to educational videos for eighty bucks a month, with a new video available about every weekday. For maximum personal growth, members are encouraged to watch a video a day. According to one source, the average iLG clip is eight minutes long. That is about $2.60 per video per day—less than the cost of latte at Starbucks.

But Wait, There’s More!

At those prices, it’s easy to see why iLG feels comfortable calling themselves “one of the fastest growing companies in America,” even if they don’t appear on the the Inc. 5000 list for 2008. It’s a no-brainer to spend three bucks and ten minutes a day to completely change your life, catapult yourself out of the tedium of the workaday world and into the excitement of wealth and happiness. The money you pay to iLG earns you access to the brilliant ideas of its legendary instructors. It also gives you the chance, if you choose, to become a marketer for iLG and earn commissions on people who sign up at your direction.

This is where most people politely turn away, for the three letters i, L and G are now irrevocably associated with M, L and M. iLearningGlobal is a multi-level marketing company. Customers not only pay for the product, but may distribute the product to others for a cut of the profits. Those secondary purchasers, in turn, may become distributors, and any sales they make will generate income for all those above them. The details of this system, including the additional fees for the Premium and EDGE upgrades, balance requirements for various legs, and overall payout schedules are helpfully explained in iLG PDF.

The Silver Screen

Watching a few sample iLearningGlobal videos feels a bit like reviewing archival footage of televangelists. Each presenter talks about “secrets” that keep most people from achieving their dreams. Advice occurs in the form of vague platitudes and lame suggestions such as “learn from the experts.” Almost all of the titles of videos and e-books seem to refer to networking strategies, sales tips, personal growth and self-motivation. One notable exception is Sandy Boktin’s tax strategy content, which must surely contain detailed information about IRS regulations and practical filing advice. Unfortunately, I could find no samples for this topic—only inspirational videos filled with variations of the suggestion “get rich by paying less taxes.”

One area where iLearningGlobal does unquestionably exceed expectations is with regard to video quality. Web surfers accustomed to the chunky, low-bandwidth amateur films of YouTube will find the full-screen cinematic experience of iLG quite impressive. But it’s not as if the company has done anything more than resell the Vusion video player, whose sample clips of nature scenes and musical performances are equally stunning.

The primary claim from iLG is that “studies show” high-quality video improves student retention, thus helping to justify the monthly fees. However, I’m unable to find the reference to any research supporting this statement, either in iLG materials or elsewhere. In fact, there is some evidence to the contrary. A paper in Online Learning News offers the following report from a research project:

[Video content was reworked] into four treatments: full-motion, animation, slide show (low motion), and still pictures (limited visual stimuli). Conventional wisdom was that the full-motion would be best. But it turned out there was no difference in learning among the groups using each treatment.

If moving from still pictures to full-motion has no effect on retention, then what good is it to upgrade from standard web quality to high definition? It might be more pleasant to watch T. Harv Eker on video so good you can see his pores, but research shows you don’t actually learn more.

Academic Competition

Both the veracity of iLG’s assertions and value of their material seem to diminish with each paragraph. Still, twenty bucks a week is less than a decent cable subscription, and while iLearningGlobal cannot offer hundreds of channels and nearly a century of recorded content, they assure their material is fresh, powerful and important. Unsurprisingly, there are other organizations with considerably more experience and resources interested in widespread education. These institutions date from the middle ages, and are known as universities.

It is hard to imagine a competition between an MLM e-Learning company and the world of academic institutions, and on traditional metrics there is no comparison. However, universities have begun to make course content available online. Academic Earth offers over 2,000 videos, four times what iLG currently boasts. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has made virtually all of their curriculum—that is 1,900 complete courses— available online as part of their OpenCourseWare initiative. In fact, MIT is now just one of two hundred institutions putting class materials on the web as members of the OCW Consortium. Even the United Nations recently joined this endeavor. All of this great online educational content is not the interesting part, however. There is one other aspect to these effort which is heart-stoppingly profound.

These resources are available free of charge.

Between iLearningGlobal and the world of open course ware, there is no comparison. One gives you access to a few hundred videos and e-books of mostly motivational content for eighty bucks a month while the other provides an astounding array of millions of elements of university courses from institutions around the world, including tens of thousands of videos, e-books, course notes, assignments, tests and related material for no cost whatsoever. The disparity between iLG and OCW is several clicks beyond astounding. This is astronomical difference in value.

Choosing for Yourself

Although the quantity of information is unquestionably better on OCW, there are a handful of reasons to consider iLG. The folks who run iLG claim to have hand-picked premiere content and put it all in one place, which is only available from the OCW movement with a free aggregator like Academic Earth. Plus, you cannot generate revenue as a marketer with OCW, since a percentage of zero is still zero. The iLearningGlobal product may be a great way to make money—especially if people have no awareness of freely available resources. If there is a right time to sell iLG, it’s now rather than later. In the future, there will only be more free content and more awareness of its value, making the e-learning space increasingly competitive.

On a more fundamental note, iLearningGlobal is in the content business. Buying into iLG, and especially into the concept of reselling iLG through the multi-level marketing option, is an assertion that information is property. Although it would be a violation of the iLearningGlobal terms of service, a group of friends could split the costs of a single login and increase the benefit. Although it would be a violation of the iLearningGlobal terms of service, a tech-saavy member could record the clips and distribute them to colleagues.

But I for one believe that information cannot be controlled. I believe that the awesome power of copy and paste make laws which restrict intellectual property as ineffectual as those against profanity. The great knowledge of the world cannot be restrained by login screens or college gates. Learning is invaluable, yet no price need be paid.

Further Reading:

• Public and private School costs
• YouTube grows at 20 hours per minute
• MLM Watch

Would you like to leave a comment? Read this.

###

Next:
<< Wearing Hats in Church

Previous:
The Ugly and Unsung >>