The University of Auckland in New Zealand Delivers Professional Development to 250 K-12 Schools Online

University of Auckland’s Faculty of Education faced a multi-level challenge – how to provide culturally responsible professional development with relevant content to schools across New Zealand via two programs: Digital Pathways and Te Whanau Maioh. One more challenge, Te Whanau Maioh is a brand new bilingual delivery initiative, so the content would have to be delivered both in English and Māori, the country’s indigenous language.

Webcasting via Mediasite was the solution. 

“Our webcasting focus has been on accessing the student voice, identifying teacher needs, incorporating education in Māori, and meeting the e-learning requirements of schools,” said Mark Dashper, Faculty of Education, Team Solutions at University of Auckland. “Our strategy is based on Mediasite which has allowed us to accomplish these things.”

Using Mediasite, Dashper’s team has been able to expand their offerings in a rapidly changing environment to meet the needs of an increasing range of schools.

“We’ve seen a really exciting momentum,” said Mark. “We offer hybrid event webinars combining year-10 to year-12 students with university students in a tertiary environment. The presentations have been very popular for exploring career pathway options as students make the transition from school into higher education.”

Mark says the primary benefit of using Mediasite has been providing a delivery framework that builds on the concepts of presence, engagement and achievement. Positive results are measured in the expansion of the program’s national contracts in all curriculum areas, in both languages. University of Auckland’s Faculty of Education is one of the largest providers of K-12 e-learning professional learning development in New Zealand’s North Island region.

“We’re excited about the future possibilities in this medium. Using Mediasite we are able to offer a coordinated delivery to schools,” said Mark. “Mediasite gives us an edge by providing a product that we can easily customize to meet our schools’ needs. It gives us the ability to adapt to change, and continue to provide cutting edge programming for all of our schools, which in turn meets the needs of all of our students.”