China’s St. Paul School Prepares Students to Communicate, Collaborate Globally with Mediasite Lecture Capture

Challenge:

St. Paul’s School in Macau, China provides a 15-year program, educating students from preschool to college prep.

Aware of the pressures put on the education system by the digital revolution and globalization, the school began a seven-year project to leverage the power of information and communication technologies.

“The speed at which information spreads and changes and the need to develop skill sets to communicate and collaborate globally, and also the ubiquitous usage of digital devices, have really forced us to supplement and enhance our traditional teacher-centered, information transfer mode of teaching with more student-centered, collaborative and engaged learning,” said Manel Machado, director of academic technology.

The curriculum and teaching material needed to be enhanced, and the school needed to provide better teaching and learning tools and improve communication with parents. It needed a lecture capture system to improve teaching and learning.

Solution:

“In a class of 35 students, many students may not have the chance to ask questions of fully understand the lesson during class. We needed a system that would allow students who are reluctant to ask questions to learn and review at their own pace,” Machado said. “We also needed a system that would allow parents to view what was being taught in the classroom. Moreover, the workflow had to be simple for the teachers and non-intrusive in the classroom. It had to be easily configurable for different classes and subjects form school year to school year.”

Mediasite met all their requirements.

Each teacher is required to record all lectures via Mediasite for students and parents to review anytime, anywhere. Using Mediasite analytics, teachers can see who watched each video, and what areas were most interesting. This allows teachers to adjust their lectures accordingly to make them more engaging and useful to the students.

Results:

The school is known as one of the early adopters of ICT (information and communications technology) in education to prepare students for the future. Today, the school supports one of the largest one-to-one programs in the region with more than 1,700 students and 200 teachers using technology on a daily basis to assist teaching and learning.

“Mediasite has many more possibilities to enhance teaching and learning, and some of our teachers are already making use of its capabilities, such as flipped classrooms and campus-wide broadcasts,” Machado said. “In the future, we will try to develop more innovative learning strategies, possibly partnering with teachers and students abroad.”