University of Maryland, Baltimore Dental School

Challenge

When officials at the University of Maryland-Baltimore Dental School planned a new building, they wanted the facility tailored for dental education, which meant a focus on video.

“Typical course offerings are very intense and highly visual,” said Dr. James Craig, professor in the Department of Health Promotion and Policy and an educational consultant in the Office of Information Technology. “Each student needs to have a front row seat.”

After an extensive search, the team turned to the University of Maryland system for guidance and learned the A. James Clark School of Engineering had been using Mediasite successfully. The decision was made.

Solution

At the dental school, lecture halls are equipped with Mediasite for webcasting lectures.

“We’ve been using it in our lab on the fifth floor in simulated dental units,” Dr. Craig said. “With a microscope attached to a camera, a faculty member demonstrates a technique that is streamed to dental students in 150 units. Students have a front-row seat, and then the faculty member walks around and assists. Since the advancement of the technology, we first started doing podcasts, but that wasn’t as helpful as having video.”

The Payoff

Since then they’ve recorded a million lectures.

“Now that we have Mediasite, students like the opportunity to watch any time and any place,” said Craig. “To be able to stop and start it, and they particularly like the feature of being able to fast forward through the information they already know and slow it down for the stuff they need to take extra time on.”

A student survey also showed that 97 percent of students felt Mediasite made it easier to learn, 98 percent said they watch most or all of lectures online and 95 percent expressed satisfaction with Mediasite.

“One student summed up the Mediasite experience stating, ‘Keep it coming, seriously. It is the source of my academic success. My grades would really suffer if I didn’t have Mediasite’ ” said Doug Brotherton, instructional technology specialist. “With feedback like that, how can you not continue to push the boundaries?”