Netflix Approach of eLearning – Benefits, Drawbacks, and Challenges

custom LMS development

Learning is inevitable, be it personal growth or for a scalable business. Current organizations understand the continuous learning needs hence encourage the learning environment. Since technology involvement has changed the methods of learning. Even modern learners prefer customized methods of learning for better engagement. When we see stats –

  • Online learning reduces learning time for employees by 60%.
  • It is observed that e-learning consumes 90% less energy than physical training.
  • Did you know 57% of the students have mobiles assigned for school use? Additionally, 45% of school-going students have established that their favorite learning method is watching online movies and playing online games. 

Watching the change in the trend, the powerful entertainment brand, Netflix too, jumped into the learning market. Netflix is trying to grab the attention of its users not just with good quality movies and series but also e-courses. Netflix has taken a step further by transforming ways to engage employees, thereby paving unique ways to obtain exceptional business results.

Developing and growing a culture of learning requires continuous surveys/tests. Netflix, before moving towards delivering elearning solutions, emphasized A/B testing. Netflix leveraged experimentation and scientific methods in their culture to build technical capabilities resulting in building trust. 

Netflix Emphasis on Learning

Delivering exceptional customer experience has always been the primary objective of Netflix. With the help of relevant data and insights, the brand can understand the preferences of the customer and provide content accordingly. The brand boastfully owns a data pipeline that lets them power everything. Quantitative and qualitative analytics, consumer research, predictive modeling, experimentation are among a few best practices that they follow to understand their customers better and provide them with a personalized experience. 

The expert and experienced data scientists have a substantial contribution in deciding upon learning agendas which further helps in shaping the evolution of Netflix products.

Netflix has evolved a lot in a couple of years and is continuing to scale with the adoption of advanced technologies and experimentation nature. 

Benefits of Following the Netflix Approach of Learning

Delivering learning content is just like good entertainment. With quality content and optimal engagement, companies can maximize their learners’ count and ensure their continuity. The same approach is followed by Netflix. However, continuous experimentation and the use of scientific methods bring joy and opportunity to better entertain the audience. One of the best methods Netflix follows is through rigorous testing to identify the falsified ideas and hypotheses. Their learning culture lets –

  • Viewers can select preferred content and watch them at their own pace & convenience. This strategy is widely used by most corporate companies to engage their learners more. This pull-type approach also offers flexibility to the learners to access their courses anytime and anywhere. 
  • The audience indulges in optimized and real-life scenarios. Enterprise-grade custom LMS development is integrated with online courses that intensify the engagement through real-life scenarios for the diversified users, which helps them recall maximum knowledge and retain it for a long time.
  • Users engage in a series of episodes. Netflix uploads content that is shorter in duration yet has multiple episodes. This type of content-delivery strategy is more impactful and interactive. Implementing such a content delivery strategy with bite-sized content is used by many organizations to boost learner retention and engagement. 

Not just Netflix, Spotify is also among the league to implement new methods to engage customers. Entertainment platforms are using superstars as an investment for advertising on their homepage. Because users want to see bite-sized content and enjoy them, they prefer these platforms, making it a habit to continuously consume content. Platforms, like Spotify and Netflix, have –

Spent years to build a strong emotional bond -Taking Taylor Swift as an example, these entertainment platform offers them space to share their private experiences with her fans, encouraging a more personalized and emotional bond. Because she has multiple fans and adores them for her voice, they will follow her no matter the platform.

Create organic momentum – Netflix sparks engagement even when not using the app through personalized alerts and notifications. Since the platform is used and followed worldwide, people have created a community that shares the same interest and discusses the most interesting content. So even if you have not watched, the community talks will urge you to watch.

Addictive and Special – Just like fans of Will Smith will never want to miss any new movie or series released, an organization can introduce a motivational speaker or specific personalities that have the power to engage a lot of users. And the engagement doubles when the content quality is super fine and tested.

Despite being fun and addictive, as claimed, it is challenging to achieve that level. In order to remain relevant and agile, is the culture of continuous learning sufficient?

Challenges of the New Learning Approach of Netflix

The Netflix approach cannot help in building a learning culture automatically, especially when you have surplus learning resources. Some more content sometimes also means less impact, engagement, and lower return on investment.

Developing a learning culture must be taken as one of the factors to boost the availability of the content instead of the sole attribute. These tips can certainly accelerate the learning culture enabling continuous and uninterrupted learning. 

No support for offline – Employees with the zeal for learning find opportunities on the job. Companies that support learning by allowing them easy access to the resources are more likely to work better and be more productive. Companies have limited the resources and rewards to specific roles, which restricts other employees to participate and learn from mistakes and share successes. When team learning is resourced and collaborative, the sense of working towards collective goals generates continued interest in self-development.  

Change Does not occur Overnight – What companies and employees expect is an immediate change in any culture.  Building a new learning curve demands patience and perseverance to process and bring visible changes in the environment. Hence, every employee must understand why changes are being made instead of specific roles to ensure success. 

Support is Necessary – Most companies do not realize the need for guidance their learners (employees) look for. In order to engage learners, companies should opt for custom LMS with personalized learning courses. Companies do not participate in elearning software development solutions to craft them as per the needs of wider employees. The continuous engagement while building customized solutions can ensure relevant and constructive content, contributing to individual needs instead of feeling flooded by content. 

Undoubtedly, the talk about Netflix’s approach to learning is spreading where some are in favor of the concept, while others find key elements missing. Let’s learn the drawbacks of implementing the Netflix approach to your learning management. 

Drawbacks of Netflix Model of Learning

Despite many fans and followers of Netflix, many still do not fancy the concept of workplace learning with Netflix. 

Netflix Still Considered Only Good For Entertainment

An observation has been made on binge-watching and it was revealed that watching an entire season in a single sitting will make the person forget about 80% of the content watched within 72 hours. Hence, saying that the students provided with engaging methods of content delivery might not guarantee that they will be able to retain longer than a week. So, the Netflix approach will help people in attaining a degree without the ability to recall elementary concepts and facts. 

Netflix sometimes Leads to Choice Paralysis

No matter how encouraging your online learning platform is, the multitasking feature may lead to decision fatigue. Employees or the learners could not differentiate and make the final choice. Without any sense of direction or progression, learners will not be able to make the right choices. Only when the learners’ paths are clear and understandable enough to embed the information as well as apply it only then the digital learning strategy can be successful.

Active Versus Passive Practice

A leading researcher Heika Bauer explored the Netflix approach of learning and tried to understand whether the digestible and easily accessible content, when implemented in LMS, can trigger a wish for learning. However, many are still not convinced with the dependency of algorithms to make a selection from the huge collection of learning possibilities offered. They also pointed out the fact that the learners will not be able to learn the details or have in-depth knowledge from the bite-sized content. They insisted on actual doing – practice, in order to act correctly when a real-time situation occurs. The proficiency level is essential in retaining knowledge, which can be attained by practicing instead of just watching videos.

Translating Value into High-Quality Application

Beginning from scratch and then progressing the knowledge with supervised practice is one of the efficient methodologies of learning. No wonder it is a proven methodology! An individual contribution to assisting learners throughout their learning journey contributes to better learning. However, easy accessibility of the video content can certainly accelerate the learning pathway but with supervised and exercised learning, the knowledge becomes permanent, which can be served whenever needed.

False Promise of Replicating Netflix

Employees who want to consume learning content as per their choice and preferred time face the pressure of completion time and date. The managers want their employees to set goals as well as maintain a level of performance without affecting productivity during work, all of which seem irrelevant. Companies need to leverage their employees to consume the kind of data they want to as they wish. They also have to dictate a powerful reason for engagement as well as set a learning budget. It is certainly not possible to match the production prowess and value of content delivered as that of Netflix in the beginning.

Multiple Option Can Only Hook Learners

Netflix’s algorithm works on testing, as aforementioned, and assesses the taste of the learner to provide better options. Certainly, offering selection is always a better choice to engage learners but not enhance their skills. Since the corporate and enterprise-grade learners have a specific goal to learn and implement the concepts practically, Netflix will not be able to fulfill that need. Instead of solving a problem, giving learners multiple options will create confusion. Hence only showcasing the practical implementation of learning will assist in progressing the career and new source development to create value.

In a Nutshell –

Scrolling down the digital lake of content has become common. Users can spend hours till it is engaging and interesting. Netflix is one of the engaging platforms that has invested in culture, people, infrastructure, and internal education for continuous learning and improvement. With continuous testing, Netflix was able to deliver positive experiences to diverse users with geographical and device type differences, yet rendering a platform for corporate learners isn’t as efficient as entertainment.

However, many companies have considered the bite-sized content delivery method and incorporated it in mLearning Solutions to promote better engagement and improve the entire learning journey of the learner. We can expect to see improvements and changes in the elearning methods for the new-age workforce that can drive overall business growth seamlessly.

Author Bio

Alicia is a technical content writer and is associated with A3logics for over a couple of years. She has been in touch with the Mobile App Development team and is often found struggling with some unique topics for her upcoming projects. She is often found discussing the latest developments with the technical team. When not working on any of her writing projects, she is either reading any of the Agatha Christie mysteries or busy gardening.