Cuyahoga Community College (Tri-C)

Challenge: 

Cuyahoga Community College (Tri-C) in Cleveland, Ohio is a leader in online learning with Mediasite. So, when it had to shut its physical doors due to the pandemic, it was well-prepared to instantly convert to 100 percent remote course delivery.  

However, even with well-equipped technology in place, pivoting to a fully virtual environment in just a few days is a daunting task for instructors. The college needed to make sure that all faculty had access to technology that they needed and that they were fully equipped to use it.  

Solution: 

Luckily, the school already had Mediasite in place to facilitate this transition to remote learning. The college has always been ahead of the curve with its faculty training program, with several training videos for faculty already created about how to leverage technology. In the midst of the crisis, it swiftly created more intensive virtual faculty training programs to ensure they are comfortable with teaching remotely. It even created videos for students about how to shift to learning from home and using Mediasite to create video assignments. 

To ensure faculty and students were equipped with technology and internet at home to telework and study, Tri-C teamed up with PCs for People, a nonprofit dedicated to getting computers and affordable internet service into the homes of low-income individuals and provide computers to students. 

Tri-C uses a successful combination of on-demand videos with Mediasite with real-time video conferencing to create the most engaging environment for students. Faculty create supplemental lectures using the personal video capture software, My Mediasite, that students watch on their own time. They break into small groups in WebEx to discuss what they learned, and all course content is available in its Blackboard Learn LMS. 

“We’ve been engineering an online learning environment for four years now to create a more friendly and seamless way to offer virtual classes to students. With the college’s decision to switch to remote learning due to COVID-19, the structure was already there, the Mediasite technology was in place,” said Michelle Reed, Online Video Strategist, Tri-C Online Learning and Academic Technology. 

Results: 

The college is among those seeing the most success with virtual clases, because it understands a key piece of the puzzle – combining anytime, anywhere Mediasite lectures with collaborative small group discussions via video conferencing.  

In the first month of remote course delivery, faculty created nearly 3,000 lecture videos, and also re-purposed the more than 18,100 videos created with Mediasite over the past few years.  

“It’s just incredible to see our instructors embracing video technology to ensure that our classes can continue remotely,” Reed said. “We’ve created many Mediasite tutorial videos that we ask they watch first, which helps reduce the amount of time we are troubleshooting over the phone and increases our ability to help more faculty each day. It’s an uncertain time in education, but if we all embrace technology and band together, we’ll get through it with minimal class disruptions.”