What role does video play in online courses and why is it important for Podia's business strategy?

Len: It's important because of a combination of demand from consumers and a need for course creators to differentiate content and create higher perceived value than a course that's strictly text or audio or static files. Consumers want video because they’re used to instruction from an instructor, and the closest thing we have to that on the internet, at least with self-paced courses, is video. For cohort-based courses it would be streaming video. People want to see the person that's teaching them, they want to feel that person's energy, they want to be pulled into the content in a way that's immersive and rich. And we just don't have a better way to accomplish that right now that's accessible to most creators than video. 

That's what makes it important. It's been interesting to see some of the ways that the use cases have expanded and creators are capitalizing on that. But I think that's the crux of where video plays into courses.