The University of Applied Sciences – Neu Ulm
Challenge:
When The University of Applied Sciences Neu-Ulm in Germany had to close its doors due to the COVID-19 outbreak in the spring, it needed a campus-wide solution to create lecture videos for students to watch from anywhere at any time.
“We needed a central solution to create and manage all of our academic videos, which are widely used on campus, and the ability for faculty to create lecture content from their homes during this uncertain time is extremely useful,” said Jan Fiedler, Center for Digitalisation/ Digital Teaching and Learning, University of Applied Sciences Neu-Ulm.
Solution:
The international business school selected Mediasite for lecture capture and video management. It quickly rolled out the personal capture software My Mediasite to faculty so they could create screencasts of lectures from home for students to watch anytime, anywhere.
“Prior to Mediasite, faculty created lecture videos with a variety of technologies and published them across many channels. Transitioning to Mediasite allows us to create and host everything in one place, and we can also upload our hundreds of hours of legacy e-learning content into Mediasite,” Fiedler said.
The school planned for a gradual rollout of My Mediasite throughout this semester but outbreak concerns prompted a more immediate approach. All instructors have access to My Mediasite, allowing them to create supplemental video lectures from their own devices and share with students in their Moodle learning management system. My Mediasite replaces a screen recorder and video editor the school previously used.
When students and faculty begin returning to campus after global concerns of COVID-19 have subsided, the university will also start using Mediasite Mini plug-and-play capture appliances in select classrooms. They will be connected to in-room control systems, microphones, and cameras. The Mini, fully automated and schedulable, can be installed anywhere. Instructors simply plug in their laptop and start teaching.
All of their the content is hosted on an on-premises Mediasite server and available to faculty and students directly in Moodle. The legacy content, as well as the new videos faculty will create in Mediasite, will be tagged and categorized, and viewers can easily search across entire libraries of content that are easily accessible to students and will supplement future courses.
Results:
The university has an impressive academic video initiative with many faculty members creating e-learning content. It is a model for what can happen when an entire campus collaborates together to create a solid continuity plan.
“We expect My Mediasite to rapidly accelerate the use of flipped instruction on campus, and the Mediasite Mini proved to be very cost effective for us. It fit our needs of capturing two video feeds – one of the camera and one of the instructors presentation slides – perfectly,” Fiedler said.
Fiedler continued: “Security of our videos is of the utmost importance, especially with GDPR regulations. Mediasite allows us to host our deployment in-house, and its advanced security settings ensure only authorized viewers have access to the content,” Fiedler said. “Mediasite’s interactivity features are also interesting, allowing us to do in-video quizzes and polls to gauge students’ understanding of topics in real time.”
