LSE’s online streaming platform has quickly become the preferred way to study at the university. Although the Echo360 system has a long way to go to rival the slick streaming quality and customer interface of Amazon Prime, the system has many strengths. Being able to watch lectures at twice the speed saves students a lot of time, allowing them to prioritise internship applications and scrolling endlessly through LSELove, desperately hoping to find a post that even remotely matches their tragic descriptions.
The online course also allows you to avoid having to tolerate the red carpet-ready students: Starbucks cup in one hand and a crisp copy of their CV in the other. You’re not missing out on much by not going to lectures. Online videos still capture the two-dimensional personalities of your peers. In fact, it might be the more efficient system as that third dimension isn’t being wasted.
There’s very little buffering and you can quickly skip through the parts when lectures digress and start talking about how they went to Harvard and MIT. So, instead of falling asleep in the uncomfortable af Peacock Theatre, LSE Prime allows you to do it in the comfort of your own bed. But that might not be such an upgrade if you’re staying in halls.
LSE could improve their system by adding an auto-play function that immediately plays the next episode. It would make binge watching all those FM213 lectures in the Easter Holidays a lot easier. We could also get a notification when a new episode drops.
Just like Netflix, LSE refuses to release viewing figures. Perhaps this is to hide the embarrassing volume of students who don’t physically attend university.
