California State University, Fullerton

The Need

All over the world universities are searching for ways to do more with less. Due to budget cuts, educators and administrators turn to established systems with new ways to communicate and provide high-quality services.

At California State University Fullerton School of Nursing, Marsha Orr, distance education faculty liaison, felt that need acutely in many areas. In California today, about 70 percent of nurses have associate degrees — research shows that patients have better outcomes when nurses have bachelor’s degrees. Through a program at the School of Nursing, they can earn a bachelor’s degree part-time. However, getting the word out about the program was expensive and time-consuming. So the school turned to Mediasite not only for lecture-capture and distance learning, but also for recruitment, advising and orientation.

The Excitement

Realizing she and her team were repeating themselves at every recruitment stop, Orr recorded recruitment videos using Mediasite that anyone could easily access.

“There are times where somebody would email us and want to know about our program,” Orr said. “And by recording the recruitment video, we could actually provide them a link so they could watch a video about our program and get the same information that we would give face-to-face.”

Each nursing student also has an advisor, and Orr reports that some advisors conduct live Q&A sessions with students using Mediasite. Busy or distance students can still watch the advising session via streaming video and email the advisor with questions.

The Payoff

The California State University Fullerton School of Nursing is stretching its technology dollars into other departments with the added benefit that only video can provide.

“Having a dynamic presentation there with somebody answering the commonly asked questions is a lot different than the static web page,” Orr said. “So we found that recruitment was really enriched by having a webcast.”