Sam M. Walton College of Business

At the Sam M. Walton College of Business media support center at the University of Arkansas, two full-time staff and three part-time student technicians deal with many technical issues every day. These daily tasks include video conferencing, providing support for more than 65 classroom and conference spaces, digital signage for three buildings, equipment checkout for students and multimedia productions for classrooms and events. What's the driving force behind the media support center?

Mediasite

The college uses Mediasite to deliver classes and communicate. Events, such as guest speakers, live panel-driven forums, training videos, and online noncredit classes, are delivered in addition to the regular Managerial MBA programs.

"We've been using Mediasite for over seven years here," said Jim Goodlander, associate director of technology at the Sam M. Walton College of Business. "The old method of delivering classes included bridge videoconferencing over three Arkansas counties, and there was a lot of room for Murphy's Law to take effect on equipment."

Goodlander said switching to Mediasite not only cut down on possible equipment failure, it has also allowed his team to streamline production and manage that content in a more organized fashion. Students are also extremely satisfied.

"All our students now depend on their once-a-month face to face classes being recorded so they can review later. Now that people have adapted to this technology so well, I find people are often coming to me specifically mentioning Mediasite as the system they want to use for delivery. It has sold itself to our faculty and staff," Goodlander said.