Educational content delivery: An experimental study assessing student preference for multimedia content when monetary cost is involved

This paper addresses the high cost of transmission over mobile networks, when educational content consists of multimedia files. The proposed solution adapts the multimedia content by changing the bit rate. In order to validate the proposed solution, a preliminary study has been performed. The results of the study show that in average a decrease of 79% in size was obtained for the multimedia content involved in the study. This results in a decrease of the price the learner has to pay for downloading the multimedia content. When the subjects are not provided with any information regarding the quality of the video or the cost of transmission the same number of subjects proffered the original version as the ones who prefer the lower quality version. In the case when the size of the multimedia clips, and the cost of delivery over mobile networks are provided, the number of subjects who preferred the adapted versions increased to 95.44%.