Like many of our higher education customers, California State University-San Marcos (CSUSM) is a 10-year veteran when it comes to managing academic video with Mediasite Video Platform. In a recent CSUSM campus visit with Chuck Allen, Manager of eMedia & Learning Spaces, and Damon Adamo, Systems Engineer, I was inspired to learn how Mediasite swiftly moved beyond classroom capture a decade ago to become the school’s “Media Hub.”
Today, CSUSM uses Mediasite as its own private YouTube to upload, distribute and manage any campus video. This is particularly important as CSUSM strongly believes in providing instructors the choice of creating video with the tools most familiar and comfortable to them. Allen estimates that nearly 80% of the video distributed and managed by Mediasite Video Platform is created or uploaded from other video sources like Camtasia Relay, YouTube and Vimeo.
Faculty (and even students) are embracing this flexibility and creating plenty of their own video, outside of the classroom. For example:
- Online Spanish classes use video to capture the course’s required conversation component.
- Sign language classes conduct final exams via Mediasite.
- Students create videos as part of assignments, uploading them in a variety of formats.
- On request, the library digitizes media titles for its Media Library Online.
Beyond academics, Mediasite Video Platform is also used by CSUSM business departments, including Finance and others, for new application training and product roll-outs.
One of the greatest benefits of a video platform like Mediasite is that it provides a secure, managed home for CSUSM videos. According to Allen, “Faculty need the freedom to use copyrighted materials in their presentations” in compliance with Fair Use and the TEACH Act. This means ensuring that the only individuals with access to course videos are students enrolled in the class during a specific period of time. Password-protecting videos for students of a particular section is a key advantage of a video management platform over publicly available online portals like YouTube.
Tracking video viewership is also important. Through Mediasite Analytics Allen and his team analyzed viewing trends and found that most activity occurs during the first 12-15 minutes of a video. Based on this they adopted a practice of rarely recording entire classes. Rather than long format lecture capture, they lean toward producing more short form video or “chunking” longer content into smaller, more digestible segments.
When it comes to video, several of CSU-San Marcos’ sister schools also think outside the classroom walls. Learn how CSU-Fullerton uses Mediasite for training, recruitment and orientation. Also, check out how San Diego State University created a unique learning studio called the Learning Glass with Mediasite.
These aren’t the only campuses realizing the benefits of Mediasite. This week, we announced that Mediasite was named a preferred video content management solution for the California State University System. Learn more.