To keep their skills sharp and maximize income or employability, people turn to sites like CreativeLive.com to fine-tune their Photoshop expertise or learn how to use Instagram as a sales channel.
“We’ve served up more than two billion minutes of free education to every country on the planet,” says Chase Jarvis, the site’s chief executive and one of its founders.
Most of CreativeLive’s classes, which are clustered into categories like “Photo and Video” and “Art and Design” and streamed live from the company’s broadcast studios in Seattle and San Francisco, are intended to help people develop skills to put to professional use. “What we’re trying to do is create the most vibrant learning experience we can,” Mr. Jarvis says. “When we do a podcasting class, we get Alex Blumberg, a former producer for ‘This American Life,’ to teach it. And since he’s the best in the world at what he does, he puts on an amazing show.”
The surest way to dazzle today’s lifelong learners is through expertise and instruction, not gimmicky and tacked-on showbiz elements. And yet because there is a sizable paying market for educational media — CreativeLive.com offers the initial live broadcasts of its classes free, then charges $24 to $299 for on-demand access to them — producers are investing more in this material. As a result, the teaching talent becomes better, the production values improve and educational courseware can be just as engaging as any other form of media.
