Photo courtesy of USA Today
By now, you may have heard about the University of Tennessee Knoxville student’s heartwarming story about life as a single mom.
Therapeutic recreation student Morgan King posted a response on Twitter she received from her professor, Sally Hunter, recently after explaining she had to miss a class because she couldn’t find childcare for her daughter Korbyn.
“Please feel free to just BRING HER with you to class,” Prof. Hunter wrote. “I would be absolutely delighted to hold her while I teach, so that you can still pay attention to the class and take notes. I work for the Department of CHILD and FAMILY Studies – so how terrible would it be if I was unwilling to have a child visit our class? I’m very serious with this offer – just bring Korbyn with you!”
The University of Tennessee Knoxville uses Mediasite for lecture capture. Prof. Hunter goes on to tell Morgan that during the class she missed they watched Mediasite videos that can be accessed on-demand in the campus’ learning management system Canvas.
The post quickly went viral on Twitter – it’s been shared more than 5,700 times and has received 28,100+ likes. Her story was even featured in USA Today! Read the article, Professor’s Response to Student’s Absence: Bring the Baby (and here’s a similar article on Inspire More: Out of Nowhere Professor Snatches Student’s Baby During Lecture, The Reason Is Too Beautiful).
It’s exciting to see that Mediasite is helping this new mom stay on top of her studies. Academic video is helping tons of students just like Morgan balance work, school and parenthood.
Emily Henry of Madison, Wis. graduated from Arizona State University without leaving Madison to do it. With a baby at home and a full-time job, Emily – now the Mediasite Community Manager at Sonic Foundry – completed ASU Online by watching lectures via Mediasite.
“I could work 9 to 5, have dinner and some leisure time and then spend three to four hours on course work at night,” Henry said. “The lectures are great learning tools. I could ask questions right from the video player, as well as answer polls and surveys so professors could gauge how well I understood the material. It made me feel like I was in the classroom with the professor at ASU, despite the distance.”
Duquesne University’s Mylan School of Pharmacy in Pittsburgh, for example, has a Pharm. D. Weekend Pathway program that caters to non-traditional students with full-time jobs and families who are looking to make career changes. On-site weekend courses are all recorded via Mediasite for students to review on-demand, enabling them to earn a Doctor of Pharmacy degree in four years.
One single mom with two kids who commutes from Massachusetts to Pennsylvania for the weekend program said: “Mediasite is very helpful to me. If I miss something during the class, I can always go back and review the information, because it’s hard for me to meet the professors during the week.”
More than 40 percent of Eastern New Mexico University’s student body consists of non-traditional students with busy lives, living in rural areas. Prior to starting an academic video program, distance students had to drive to a site to watch video of a transmitted class. More than two-thirds of the 6,000 students at ENMU now take at least one online course and hundreds take courses entirely online with live webcasts.