John DeAngelo is affectionately known around our office as the “Godfather of lecture capture.” 

We don’t throw that title around lightly. John, the director of educational technology services at the University of California San Francisco and former associate dean for information technology in Temple’s Fox School of Business, has put almost every lecture capture brand to the test. He was one of the first college-level CIOs in higher-ed, supervising the installations of some of the largest capture projects in the country. 

He’s basically seen and used it all, outfitting hundreds of classrooms during his almost decade-long look into what works.  

Last month John came to Sonic Foundry headquarters here in Madison, Wis. to share his expertise about classroom capture systems and how he uses Mediasite to impact faculty feedback and student outcomes. 

In the spring of 2011 UCSF started a pilot lecture capture project with a vendor other than Mediasite. They did 11 installs and it took the school several months to get the program up and running. UCSF had a very high adoption rate from the department of medicine and the school of nursing  and a high demand for streaming from other departments for things like special events and lectures. But John noticed some problems, especially the fact that the videos couldn’t be streamed to mobile devices. 

“We learned that this particular vendor had no roadmap for mobility which caused real problems for us,” he said. 

So he decided to submit RFPs for other vendors and ultimately went with Mediasite for its better management system and roadmap for mobility. (Mediasite 6 allows for live and on-demand streaming to mobile devices.)

“At UCSF we started in June 2011 with Mediasite. After installation, once we went live, every Mediasite box worked the next day. That was not the case with the preceding vendor. It took us a couple months to get it to work the way we wanted it to work.”

“It’s a school of roughly 3,500 graduate medical students and health professionals and in 10 months we recorded 2,050 presentations.”

There were 63,000 views on those presentations and 136,000 hours of viewing, which is an amazing feat. Compare that to when John was at Temple University using a different vendor for lecture capture.

Capture at Temple between July 2004 to 2006 (26 months) for 7,000 students resulted in 1,700 presentations. 

Bottom line: UCSF records online classes faster with Mediasite over other lecture capture systems. 

Faculty adoption of Mediasite lecture capture is very high. Basically all John had to do was ask them: “Would you like to come on board, do nothing, and we capture all your instruction?”It was just that easy.

“Many people obviously thought that was a win-win for them,” he said. “I think the value (of lecture capture) has been primarily on the student side of things. Students love capture. I’ve been struck by the degree by which it’s been embraced at UCSF medical school, but I understand why because the material that is taught in class is dense, very complex. The most valuable thing in a medical education is time. They just don’t have very much time,” he said. 

Medical students need to be able to watch grand rounds, lectures, presentations by authors, etc.  

“Capture affords them to time shift and say ‘Well, I’m going to miss this but I’ll watch it later,’ ” he said. 

Students can also watch presentations over and over again for review. John said Mediasite is also being used for the flipped classroom approach. He suggests to faculty that an alternative to capturing the class is using the flipped model that allows them to record a lecture ahead of time, ask students to watch it outside of class and use the class time for valuable interaction with students. 

Hundreds of people around the world tuned in for this live webcast. If you missed it or just want to see it again, click here to register and watch. You can also read more in our press release University of California San Francisco Webcasts Over Two Thousand Classes in 10 Months via Mediasite Lecture Capture Technology. 

If you're a fan of Lock Haven University (LHU) athletics you don't have to live in Pennsylvania to watch sporting events.

The university uses Mediasite to broadcast its sports coverage to parents, fans, boosters, and alumni across the globe, to places like Australia, England, and Trinidad and Tobago. 

Students in the university's HAVENc@st club in the Sports Information Office receive experience in sports announcing and production by handling various positions in the cable TV and web radio coverage of the university's sports. The program uses Mediasite to webcast every sporting event played in the Thomas Field House -- Lock Haven's home turf. It's also instilling passion and skill in aspiring young broadcasters who cover the games from the sidelines.

Peter Campbell, senior associate director of athletics at the university, presented at UNLEASH 2012 today. His presentation “Webcasting and Athletics: Reaching Out to the Community,” focused on ideas and collaboration with other groups on campus to generate revenue and expand its reach using Mediasite. 

Lock Haven is a small state school with about 4,700 students and an emphasis on international education. It competes in the Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference and has 18 varsity level sports and students from several different countries. So using Mediasite to record and live stream athletic events is “invaluable.” 

The school began using Mediasite primarily for academics but the athletic department wanted a way to have more media coverage and expand its reach. 

“We looked at Mediasite as the perfect answer,” he said. 

In 2005 the university became a laptop campus, meaning every freshman has a laptop, so that greatly enhanced the department’s ability to do Mediasite webcasts and reach a large audience. For parents, the recordings are perfect because a lot of the sporting events occur during the day when they are at work. Parents can watch live from their offices or watch it on-demand at home. 

Mediasite allows the school to reach alumni to keep them up to date with the school, and that hopefully results in donations. 

The webcasts even work for recruits, because before and at intermissions during webcasts the school plays an admissions video that provides some information about the university. 

And finally advertisers – Mediasite generates revenue for the school this way, too. There are different levels of advertising. For example, a sports broadcast sponsor involves a company (in Lock Haven’s case it’s a travel company) providing supplies to the team(s) and in turn the company’s name is displayed during webcasts and recognized as a sponsor. The general ad package generates between $30,000 and $40,000 for the school through online media guides, links on the athletic website and links on the webcasts. 

Another way the school generates revenue with Mediasite is with a phone-a-thon from the Lacrosse team. They raised over $12,000 for their program by streaming their program on Mediasite and having viewers call in to make donations. The school also helps with other campus events outside athletics and is working to purchase an ML (mobile) Recorder so it can live stream away games and also events in the community. 

He said it’s all about thinking outside the box and suggested an online auction as a way to generate revenue with Mediasite. Have people call in and place bids for what they see on their screens. 

Above is a photo of one of Peter’s slides that shows examples of what they record and how many views they received. 

Last night we held yet another celebration for our UNLEASH attendees, this time at the historic Majestic Theatre, a popular and trendy music venue in downtown Madison.

This was the first time we held it at that venue, and it was definitely a beautiful and unique one. Last year’s birthday bash paved the way for this year’s MUG Jam at the theatre, and people hung out with new and long-time Mediasite friends. We had a great band, Mark Croft, play all night and the place was packed with people on both the main floor and the balcony.

Plus, like I mentioned yesterday, we saw fellow conference attendees take the stage to play at our first MUG Jam (Mediasite User Group Jam). I was really looking forward to seeing our very own Mediasite users play together, because it was the first time they have ever played together live. Last year at UNLEASH a few attendees got together and said that they should jam together sometime. Being from all over the world, like New Zealand, Alaska, California and Texas, they couldn’t actually practice together in the traditional sense. Instead, they did it over Mediasite webcasts, and when they arrived in Madison Monday they had a few short hours to get ready for the MUG Jam. Monday was the first time they played together in person. 

Being that this party was in a theatre, we made sure that when attendees arrived they got Sonic Foundry swag. We had a table full of goodies, including ribbons with fun sayings on them that they could add to their conference badges like “I love Spotted Cow,” a favorite Wisconsin beer, “I love cheese curds,” and “Backstage Pass.” Cheese curds were obviously served, and it was funny to hear everyone who tried the cheese curds for the first time. People were asking what they were and then once they tried them they ran back to our swag table to grab an “I love cheese curds” ribbon. They’d say things like “I didn’t know they’d be THAT good,” or “I definitely earned this ribbon by how many I ate.” Here's my badge. I got a little carried away. I don't even like beer. 

Today’s our last day of the conference and we’ve got another packed day of presentations by Sonic Foundry folks and Mediasite users. We also had Jan Ozer, a Streaming Media Magazine writer, present our keynote this morning, “Sharpen Your Streaming Edge: The Future of Video Streaming or Content Consumers, Producers and Distributors.” 

Think about this: In your work, what are you trying to sell?

Communication?  Knowledge? Solutions? Opportunities?

These are all great answers and true, but they’re the wrong answers. Human beings are only purchasing one thing in 2012 – an experience.

Mike Staver, our keynote speaker for today at UNLEASH, gave a very entertaining presentation called “Leadership isn’t for cowards: How to drive performance by challenging people and confronting problems.” Mike told our Mediasite users to figure out what that experience is that people are looking for and then try to sell it. 

What motivates people? Sure, people are motivated by things like money and fear, but what truly drives every decision? According to Mike, it’s pain. Relating that to Mediasite, people resist new technology because they fear it would be more painful than their current situations.  The reason people love Mediasite is because, according to Mike, it provides a positive experience. It reduces pain for them by being easy to use.  

So no matter what industry you’re in, whether it’s education, enterprise, government, etc., you’ll be successful if you create a story that reduces pain. Mike said he’s been telling all his clients about Mediasite technology “because I think it’s so cool.” He doesn’t actually talk about the technology but rather the story and experience behind it. Instead he starts the story with “Imagine that you could …”

He suggested the following steps to keep using Mediasite in innovative, new ways and make sure others are willing to continuously update the way technology is used. 

Attack:

1. Accept current circumstances

2. Take action

3. Take responsibility

4. Acknowledge progress

5. Commit to doing different things (it’s more about the experience than the technology)

6. Kindle new relationships

If you want to have an edge with Mediasite you have to make little incremental shifts in the way you do things to always progress.