While university budgets globally wither, spending on educational technology is alive and well. From IT teams to instructional technologists, academic staff are disproportionately successful at garnering funds for lecture capture initiatives amidst an overall environment of financial cuts.
Want to know why? And how these colleges are doing it?
With every investment you make in educational technology, you are buying two things: #1 the concept of change and #2 changing with a particular vendor. Having options is empowering but can also be overwhelming, particularly in this budget climate and as technologies evolve at a rapid pace.
International companies have long embraced technology to help them connect with employees and clients in multiple locations, time zones and countries. But often the results don't live up to the hype - some technology can be resource intensive or difficult to use, the final product may not reflect the quality of your brand and the cost to get everyone that same message at the same time can damper adoption.
Many colleges and universities contemplate and execute classroom streaming strategies at a departmental or college-wide level. But the University of Tennessee Engineering Services department was among the first to attack academic streaming at a university system-wide level from the start. The challenge of providing webcasting services for five campuses, 250 smart classrooms, board meetings and countless sporting events across the entire state was an initiative that required strong research, planning, and breakthrough educational technology choices like Mediasite to be successful.
"We will never be able to afford that kind of technology.""Who's going to learn to run this technology?""How do we get started?""People need to get into the same room together for them to really understand this info.""We can just get on the phone and send the PPT around.""Once they get my presentation in a webcast, I'll be replaced.""Right now we have to find new ways to bring in revenue from outside the district."
In buildings old and new, education technology departments are opting to deploy integrated classroom-based technologies for streaming instruction online. Fueled by desire to remove all barriers for faculty - allowing them to teach as usual with no change to their presentation style - IT, AV and facility design professionals vet multiple classroom technology approaches, including camera angles and operation, lighting considerations and IT distribution issues.
Washington State University's main campus is currently experiencing what the New York Times called perhaps the largest college outbreak of the H1N1 flu virus. More than 2,000 students report symptoms of swine flu, which has led the entire Washington State system to take measures to avoid the spread of the disease between and beyond campuses.
In the last 12 months, the number of Mediasite-equipped rooms, hours of operation and webcast viewership have exploded. Large and small universities, corporations and government agencies are capturing, distributing - and having to manage - more online presentation content than ever before, often beyond what they ever imagined.
But as demand for capture increases and IT and AV environments become increasingly complex, what are the options and best practices for deploying appliance-based webcasting platforms? And how do you ensure optimal integration and reliability?
Webcasting technology is obviously one important element for recording a multimedia presentation that looks and sounds great. But there are several key ingredients, tools and techniques you must consider that, when mixed properly, will make a big impact in the quality of the webcast you ultimately serve up.
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