For the past decade, students have increasingly turned to mobile devices to watch their lectures. Now, universities are taking mobile to the next level, leveraging students' devices as part of their campus video initiatives. Cell phones and tablets are turning everyone — faculty and students alike — into not just content consumers but content creators.
Incorporating videos in the classroom isn't a luxury anymore — students demand and expect to have their lectures streamed. And the data backs that up.
Our research shows that at minimum, a student watches a Mediasite video every single second of every single day. Mediasite views are growing by 89 percent and video creation is growing by 49 percent year-over-year. While campus video is a niche category of internet video, its growth rate is anything but. It's exceeding the growth rate of entertainment video online.
All that is to say, BYOD is enabling the rapid creation of content on campuses, and colleges and universities need to have a solid strategy to support this explosion of video learning. An easy way to start is with video capture software.
Why do colleges and universities need to have prolific video initiatives?
Video in the classroom is proven to increase student outcomes, learning and retention. For example, University of the Free State in South Africa saw student pass rates jump from 26 percent to 100 percent in some rural high schools. And a student survey at University of Maryland Baltimore Dental School showed that 97 percent of students felt video made it easier to learn — 98 percent said they watch most or all of their lectures online. A medical school in Japan saw exam results improve to nearly 100% after deploying video capture in their classrooms.
What's the easiest way to start building a solid video strategy?
For institutions looking to build a solid video strategy to support user-generated content, the easiest place to start is equipping existing teaching spaces with video capture technology. Put the focus on capturing spaces where content owners are already comfortably presenting. From there, deploy personal capture solutions designed for content owners. Personal software capture technologies are extremely effective at empowering content owners to quickly and effectively share knowledge using video while at the same time making them more comfortable communicating with video. Organizations will quickly learn who are the early adopters that can lead by example.
Why are workflows so important?
Workflows are the unsung heroes of any successful video strategy, and the failure point for those that are unsuccessful. We obsess about workflows. Beyond the tools that generate the content, most important is making sure the content finds its audience. Well-integrated workflows to move user-generated content off desktops and mobile devices and seamlessly present them to the viewers is key. Desktop capture software alone won't deliver the results you'd expect. What is most important is the relationship between the desktop capture software and the video management system itself.
When you have your video capture solution tied to an enterprise video platform you can effectively manage the content.
Recording videos is just one step, though. Making sure you have the ability to manage, deliver all that video will help drive the adoption of your program.
Why consider room-based software capture?
Desktop capture tools are a great first step, but they are not designed to take advantage of infrastructure that exists in a room nor are they designed to support multi-use environments. Capture software should work with the other technologies in classrooms such as cameras, audio equipment and projectors. More importantly, a multi-use environment such as a general purpose classroom requires capture technologies that can facilitate full automation or completely ad-hoc use cases.
Regardless of the size of your school, your needs are the same. Often the only difference between a 3,000- and 40,000-student university is the number of classrooms and desktops. The workflow requirements are identical.
The need to create video is on every single corner of a university. Our job as technologists is to satisfy that need be delivering innovative technology to enable you to proliferate video as broadly, or as focused, as you desire.
As we inch closer to 2018, reach for academic success by creating a solid video strategy and allows your campus to grow as quickly as the expectations of your students.
Learn more about Mediasite Video Platform at sonicfoundry.com/unlimited.
Rob Lipps, Executive Vice President, Sonic Foundry