Fortify Your Institutional H1N1 Plan with Lecture Capture: Mediasite at Washington State University

Hello, and welcome to our continuing series of live

webinars documenting creative use of Mediasite

all around the world.

I'm Sean Brown, vice president of education, and today's

webinar is entitled Fortify Your Institutional H1N1 Plan

With Lecture Capture--

Mediasite at Washington State University.

Once again, we have a lot of people joining us from all

over the world with one of our most highly anticipated

webinars today.

Just under 300 of you seem to be online as we go on here.

And I'm not going to rattle off all the countries, but a

lot of people like to know who else is out there, I get

written in.

So we have people from Argentina, Brazil, Belgium,

Colombia, Croatia, the Czech Republic.

Welcome to all people from the Dominican Republic, England, I

believe for the first time Ethiopia, France, Germany, I

believe for the first time from Greece, India, Italy, new

friends from Norway, the Netherlands, New Zealand,

Spain, for the first time in the recent past South Africa,

and Saudi Arabia.

We have, once again I'm proud to say, all of the provinces

of Canada represented, and in all fifty states in the United

States represented as well.

Welcome to all of you for this very important global topic.

Before we get started, there's a few housekeeping items I

want to help you with, helping orient you to the Mediasite

player through which you're watching us today.

For people using the advanced Silverlight player with the

primarily black background, if you allow your mouse to hover

at any time near the bottom of the screen, you will see a

control bar with a few controls.

In the classic player where the background is primarily

white, you'll see similar controls above my head.

In both cases, you'll see something that looks like a

speech bubble in a cartoon.

That's the button you're going to use if you have a question

for me or my guest at any time during the presentation.

I'm going to hold all of the questions for my guest until

he's done with his prepared comments and I'll relay them

to him in a discussion format for the second half of the

presentation.

Also in the same toolbar, in the case of the advanced

Silverlight player with the primarily black background,

you will see an I icon--

the letter I, or an information icon.

Behind that icon button, you will see the opportunity to

look at additional presentation information,

including links to supplementary information like

the slide deck itself.

In the classic player with the primarily white background,

this is one icon above my head that looks like two links of a

chain together.

Either way, we can orient you to supplementary information

about this presentation in that manner.

Now to introduce my friend and guest today.

Saleh Elgiadi is the director of information technology

services and academic and research technologies at

Washington State University in Spokane.

He is responsible for campus, academic, and research

computing, distance learning technologies, high performance

computing, video and digital media production, as well as

strategic planning and policy development for all of those

areas I just mentioned.

Elgiadi has worked over 20 years and has experience

working in higher education, has provided vision and

leadership for a wide variety of successful information

technology initiatives on campus, including an online

employee training and development system, a course

management system, high definition video conferencing,

video on demand services, podcasting, and near and dear

to my heart, the introduction of webcasting to that

university.

Saleh holds a bachelor's degree from Eastern Washington

University and a master's in international business

management from Whitworth University.

He was heavily involved in EDUCAUSE in a leadership

capacity and many other professional organizations

which brought him to my attention and friendship over

the years past. So thanks for coming all the way to Madison,

Wisconsin, to share your experiences with us and your

prepared remarks.

Thank you, Sean, and thank you for this introduction.

And thanks to everyone who has tuned in and is watching this

webcast. It is an honor to be here and to be able to share

with you a component of our continuing of operations

planned through the use of lecture capture.

I will begin by giving you a brief introduction of our

campus and the region in which it is located, and also give

you a background of our lecture capture activities

over the years so as to give you a context from which you

can draw comparisons as you consider lecture capture in

your business continuity planning.

So first, about my campus.

Washington State University Spokane is located on the

Riverpoint Campus.

And while Riverpoint Campus is home to Washington State

University Spokane, it also hosts Eastern Washington

University and programs from the University of Washington.

And our focus is to become the health sciences

campus of the region.

Washington State University Spokane is the owner and the

manager of the campus.

And all three institutions provide programs in health

sciences with Washington State University having the larger

portion of offerings.

WSU has the College of Nursing on campus, programs from the

College of Pharmacy, the first year of medical education,

sleep research and, speech and hearing, and WIMHRT, the

Institute for Mental Health Research and Training.

And EWU provides a dental hygiene program, occupational

and physical therapy, the first year of dentistry, as

well as diagnostic imaging.

And University of Washington offers the MEDEX physician

assistant program.

Our campus is striving, and our strategic direction, is to

become a model for health sciences and health care

education through team medicine by integrating teams,

integrating curriculum, health IT, and

interdisciplinary research.

Our immediate goal and our focus is to have a full

medical school and dental, as well as pharmacy--

we already have nursing--

and to grow nursing and also public health education and

research programs.

We're located in Spokane, Washington, which is

considered the regional health care hub.

And we are literally within walking distance of major

hospital systems and clinics and we are on the edge of

downtown Spokane.

And the region offers innovation centers for

research such as cardiology, cancer treatment, robotics,

and are pioneers and leading in the effort of unified

electronic medical records.

One of five workers in Spokane and the Spokane region are

employed by the health care industry.

The region offers extensive health industry training,

relationships, as well as wide range of allied health.

So I would like to capture historic context as we began

in mid-'80s.

We broke new ground by combining broadcast television

as well as microwave technology, at that time, to

transmit classes to students at far sites that

could not be on campus.

And the College of Nursing was a pioneer in adopting and

embracing this technology.

And so they began offering courses throughout the state

of Washington to learning centers as well as the other

branch campuses of Washington State University.

And so we began our lecture capture activities to

safeguard against technological failures and our

connectivity because we didn't want the students who are at

distant sites miss on the lecture because of

connectivity issues or because of failure of the technology.

So we began with VHS recording.

It was a manual process.

We taped at the origination site and we kept those tapes

for two weeks.

And so the students, whether there was a connectivity issue

or there is illness or whatever, then the students

can request those tapes.

And they must come in to the site-- on site-- to view the

taped lecture.

And then, in 1999 or thereabouts, we began to adopt

the video streaming technology and we

streamed some of the courses.

And that was a very good step for us because it allowed

students to access it from home or from off campus, so

they didn't have to come into the audio-visual laboratory.

But still, the quality was not great, especially for health

science curriculum, for medical imaging

and detailed content.

We continue to do video streaming today.

We do it for events and classes that are

appropriate for that.

In 2004, MP3 players, iPods, et cetera, became prevalent

and ubiquitous, and so students had them.

They requested that we audiocast our lectures.

And we adopted the technology and

integrated it into our LMS--

at that time, it was Blackboard.

Since then, we moved on to an ANGEL Learning.

And it provided mobility for the students and also

supplemented the lecture content that is available on

the

LMS. In 2006--

our Ph.D.

students are located throughout the state and were

not always able to go to a site where video conferencing

is available.

And so we looked at web conferencing technology.

Again, it was great.

It's excellent for content quality, but really did not

prove to be ideal for interactive classes where

there's a lot of give and take between the faculty and the

students, and also the students and the students, at

other sites.

And we found that faculty really had to manage the

technology while still teaching, which took away from

their core mission, which is to deliver the content and

manage the classroom, rather than the technology.

So we still use this technology today.

However, we use it in classes where faculty need to or have

a requirement to demonstrate an artifact or demonstrate an

application such as SPSS or some other application.

So today, and starting in 2008 with the new nursing building

coming online, we decided to adopt Mediasite for our

lecture capture.

And so our installation consists of a Mediasite EX

server, web portal server, database server.

You don't really need all three servers, but we had a

plan to grow, and so we decided to dedicate each

server to a function there.

And then, also, we purchased Mediasite recorders.

For heavy-use classrooms, which are literally used from

eight o'clock in the morning until about 10 o'clock at

night, we've installed dedicated recorders.

And then, for the rest of the classrooms, we've installed

recorders at our classroom control or management studio.

And so we are able to direct the recorders to any of the

classrooms or conference rooms that we wish to record.

We have about 30 of those classrooms and conference room

combinations.

Mediasite offered us excellent video

quality as well as audio.

And most important is the content quality and the

multimedia capture capability.

Our students like the control of the views that they see.

They can see the content, they can see the video, they can do

picture-in-picture, and so on.

So they have complete control of the player.

And also, the students see the lecture just as if it happened

in its entirety without missing

anything from the lecture.

For our technical staff, this capture technology provided

one-step automatic publishing to catalogs.

So no longer do we have to stream live and then FTP the

files to an FTP server and then stream it from there.

So it was done all automatically, as well as with

a check mark in a box, we were able to create podcasts.

So it eliminated a number of machines that were doing the

streaming and the podcasting and the lecture capture.

So we're doing them all with one recorder.

We started implementing Mediasite in fall 2008 and

really did not start recording until spring 2009 And as you

can see from the graph, that it was quickly welcomed by

students and faculty.

So currently--

last week I took the snapshot of this report--

and we have 50 faculty who will participate in the

program and we have about 80 courses that we are recording.

And you can see that in August and September, we had a huge

surge in the number of views.

Of course, this was taken on the seventh of November, so

November shows slightly less.

But only seven days into it and I expect

that graph to grow.

So adoption of this technology was favorable among our

faculty, as well as our students, and they

see value in it.

With the threat of H1N1 and other pandemics, we've looked

at, since we have this technology and it's available

to us, we've decided that we would use it to augment our

continuity plan.

Should there need to be a time when we close the campus or

there's social distancing, then we have content, should

we decide to provide it and extend to the students, then

we have it in hand.

So our plan, then, included that we record as many

lectures as possible.

So we go out and sell it to the remaining faculty who are

not reporting.

We wanted to retain a full academic

year or captured lectures.

And also, we've provided electrically recording

services for faculty who are teaching in classrooms where

we don't have recorders or we cannot reach him with our

centralized recorders.

So, simply, we schedule a room where we can record and then

the faculty would prepare and record their lecture

beforehand and we archive that for later use.

We also assist faculty who are not able to deliver from on

campus to deliver the lecture from their home office or off

campus if they are out for professional development or

doing a presentation somewhere else and wish

to deliver the lecture.

Then we can do that using video conferencing technology

and record using Mediasite.

The lectures can be viewed live or on demand and we also

provided our technical staff with remote access capability.

So should we not be on campus, we can still operate the

equipment from off campus and allow our faculty to deliver

their lectures, should they choose to do that.

The technology you we use for this plan is Mediasite

recorders, and we also use Polycom high definition and

standard definition-- we have a mix of both--

video conferencing codecs in classrooms and conference

rooms. We also use, from off campus, an

application from Polycom.

It's called CMA Desktop video conferencing.

And also, the faculty will have to have a desktop or a

laptop computer to use.

On campus, the way we record is we initiate a video

conference, whether the class is being sent to

other sites or not.

And then we capture and take the output from the video

conference codec into the Mediasite recorder and record

the happenings of the classroom and the lecture.

From off campus, we use the same methodology using the CMA

Desktop video conferencing.

The faculty will call in to the campus using that

application and we would capture the output from the

recorders--

from the codecs into the recorder and offer.

So we are able to offer both channels, people, and content.

I think that concludes my plan and I'll be happy to answer

any questions that you may have.

Well that was great prepared remarks.

Excellent.

There's a lot of questions coming in.

Can you go back--

I know this is hard to ask to do--

there's a couple of questions about the graph you showed

about viewership.

So do you think you can click back there?

Joshua asks the question best. He said-- and I know you

addressed this a little bit, but--

in the presentation, you had a graph showing how Mediasite

was indicated into your system.

From August to October, it grew greatly, but then it

dropped drastically.

Just wanted to know why, from October to November, the graph

showed this fall?

Actually, as I said, this graph was taken on the seventh

of November, which is only seven days into the month.

And so it shows about 800, close to 900 views.

And we--

So that's not a whole month.

So that's not a whole month.

This is practically three, four days--

working days--

from the month.

So is it on a pace to exceed the previous month?

I suspect so.

The trend is showing--

Because that looks like my 401(k) right there.

The trend is showing growth since August and I expect it

to grow even more.

Fantastic.

And then Sherry had a question that related to the data,

which is why I you pull back the slide.

Is the data indicated here easily reviewed and exportable

from Mediasite?

I can help answer that question too.

Is it saved historically from first use of Mediasite at the

institution?

This would be very helpful for Sherry as she thinks about how

to use Mediasite campus wide.

I'm not the technical person behind these technologies, but

I know enough to pull some reports.

This report was an annual report,

which actually is pre-built.

And I just asked that I would look at an entire year.

You can look at a week.

You can look at a day.

You can look presentation by presentation.

You can also look by the users.

And so it has a lot of a built-in reports and

flexibility that will give you an idea of gauging how it's

being used, what is being watched, and

who's watching what.

Well said.

Better than me.

The Mediasite system--

Sherry, and for the others of you asked about where he got

these reports--

does have an incredible variety of reports.

And it's an extremely important

emphasis for us as a company.

We'll forward to you--

John Pollard, technical product manager, passionately

talks about reports better than anyone.

But as Saleh said so well, you can track by users or know

within a presentation what segments are interesting

people and things like that.

It's how I tell y'all how many of you are watching and how I

can watch if it's growing or are you dropping off or

whatever else is going on.

And so far, you're still hanging in there.

Next question.

Was adoption of this technology--

the Mediasite lecture capture technology--

faculty driven, or did you have to drive it.

And are they using Skype, he asks, because we talked about

other technologies that they may be using together.

So could you be more specific?

And then, the last question that he asked is, was there a

lot of training involved?

Actually, the adoption of this was both.

We made this technology available and also explained

to faculty that the possibility of loss of

connectivity--

because we use a lot of distance education classes.

Our classes are broadcast to other locations within the

state of Washington.

And so faculty were very happy to have this backup plan in

case technology fails.

But the students are really the drivers behind the

podcasting and the webcasting and so on.

And so they would go and talk to their faculty because they

see faculty so-and-so is doing it, so they want

to have that ability.

They want to have that access.

And my job, and my department's job, is to be the

enablers and try to invest in the technologies that our

students are asking for and our faculty are asking for.

You said invest, and there's been two questions that were

asked that are candid questions--

which we like here--

about, Mediasite costs money.

And some of the other technologies that you have

deployed, like video conferencing, cost money--

more than some other possibilities.

One person asked, do you think it was easier for you to get

this investment because it was campus wide, or is it that you

were able to convince--

even at the departmental level--

that these systems are valuable?

How do you see the cost investment relative to the

value of these systems?

I think it all goes back to the value that you put on the

technology.

For us, it provided us with a backup plan in case of

technology failures.

And then, also, I find it easier with health sciences--

for example nursing.

They always are on the leading edge everywhere you go in

adopting technologies.

And also medical schools.

And they see value in having the lectures captured and

having those lectures available to the students

beyond the classroom for extra viewing, for remediation, and

so on and so forth.

But it works itself to become a complete and comprehensive

continuity plan, should you choose to use it in that way.

And so the investment part is not really difficult to

convince the powers that be that they needed to invest in

this because it is seen by faculty and students as an

important component and aspect in their teaching

and learning process.

Got it.

Judy asked me, does the report function I described come with

the package or does it cost extra?

It is part of the core that package.

So I'm sorry I wasn't clear about that.

Another question that somebody specifically had-- and there's

multiple questions like this, Josh asked it best. When

people are using Mediasite from home to teach--

like you said-- are you sending a Mediasite unit to

their house or are you using some other technology?

No, actually, the faculty or the person at home who is

delivering an event or a lecture that we need to

capture, we install--

and we can do it over the phone, actually.

They just go to a web site, download the

CMA desktop or any--

By Polycom?

By Polycom.

That's what we use because of its ease of use and the great

enterprise features.

It gives us a great quality.

But any video conferencing software that allows you to

have people plus content can be used in this regard.

So they would call in to our campus to a classroom that we

scheduled that we can record from, whether centrally or we

have dedicated recorder in that classroom.

Sorry to interrupt.

So the architecture of your campus is such that you have

classrooms that are both video conference enabled and also

Mediasite lecture capturing enabled.

Exactly.

It works together.

It works together.

Your H1N1 plan is, do normal recording, have an academic

year in the tank that you can cut over to.

But if somebody wants to create content offline, you

have them use video conferencing technology to

phone it in, if you will, and then it gets pulled into the

Mediasite just like they were in the classroom.

So two technologies used together.

Right.

They just connect through the internet just like--

in fact, in the physical classroom, that's

what they're doing.

They're connecting into a video conference and then we

take, there's two DVI outputs from the video conference

codec that go into the Mediasite recorders-- one

channel for people, one channel for audio and video.

And then we just initiate the recording.

And so it works the same way when you're home.

You just call over the internet--

Like a Polycom CMA.

Into a Polycom.

Yep.

OK.

Got it.

Totally makes sense to me.

A lot of you out there you use Mediasite in conjunction with

video conferencing.

We'll be doing it in another webinar today with a friend of

mine from Brazil.

This is great.

And for those of you offline, I will provide my contact

information.

You can certainly contact us, and if you have technical

questions on how it's done or how is it cabled, and so on

and so forth, we would be glad to do that.

[? Kathy ?]

Anderson asks, what would the impact be in

terms of the CMS--

which I know you had a lot to do with on your campus, that

initiative as well--

can you be more specific about how all this content gets

managed relative to the CMS and in your continuity plan?

How you deal with that?

Yeah.

Almost all of our courses have a CMS component.

If nothing at all, it's just the syllabi being posted in

that environment.

And so for courses that we capture and lectures that we

capture, we can publish that catalog as an RSS

feed that we put in--

whether it's a Blackboard or ANGEL.

Currently, we're using ANGEL.

We'll put that RSS feed so every time we capture a

lecture, it's automatically published to that catalog and

the student logs into their course and goes in there and

sees all of the RSS feeds and all of the

lectures for that class.

That makes sense.

So you're embed the link to the catalog once in its spot

in Blackboard or ANGEL, and you forget about it.

You know that when you record, it's going to go to that spot.

Absolutely.

And we do the same thing for podcasts.

Do you have a special catalogue set up-- and if you

said this, I apologize, but just reading the questions--

do you have a special catalog set up for backup.

Like, if I'm a student and it's normal continuity during

the semester.

I'm watching fresh content that's being recorded daily.

Oops.

Now the campus is closed.

Then you're going to bring online the canned and recorded

previous semesters as an alternative.

Do you do you create a special catalogue for that, or do you

just route content and move it into the existing catalog?

Currently, what we're doing is we're

organizing it by semester.

You're organizing it by semester, period.

The semester is the semester.

Yeah, so you have course xyz, fall 2009, is a catalog.

And spring, it might be course xyz, spring 2010.

Then those are available and the faculty--

should we need to do that-- then the faculty can make the

call from which semester to pull that content and which

day and which week and so on and so on.

And this isn't just a theory at Washington State I'm not

sure how much it effected the Spokane campus, but the New

York Times reported and considers that your campuses

probably have experienced, so far, the worst number of

attendees sick of any school in the nation so far.

At the beginning of the school year, our main campus--

which is about 75 miles away from this

health sciences campus--

our main campus had about 2,000 reported cases of a

flu-like illness.

Thought to be swine flu, but anyway it's a flu-like

illness, and so it was a huge number.

We were lucky at the health sciences campus in Spokane.

We didn't have that many cases.

And to be honest with you, we didn't track them.

But the content is available therefore students, regardless

if they were sick and they're feeling up to it, they can

watch it live.

And if they can't, and they can have the opportunity to go

back and make up those lectures and see those

lectures over again on demand.

Fair enough.

Good description.

Another question.

Jackie asks it best, but a lot of people had the question.

What is the equipment that's inside the classrooms--

all of it, not just the Mediasite.

You probably have RLs instead of MLs.

But what kind of cameras do you have?

Webcams?

Professional stuff?

Operators?

What you got going on in there?

A typical distance ed classroom--

and most of our classrooms are distance ed--

aside from the VHS, DVD player and the computer and the

document camera, we have installed an instructor camera

that is facing the instructor.

We have LCD screens that show both content and the far site.

Our system is such that if someone at the far site

speaks, then it switches to that site.

And then we have two student cameras, on average.

Sometimes one.

Just depends on the size the classroom.

All controlled by a control panel that sits on the podium.

But we also have a classroom support area that

is centrally located.

Should a faculty need assistance operating the

classroom, then we can assist from behind the scenes in a

discreet way.

And so faculty have the ability to either manage the

classrooms themselves using the panel.

Very intuitive, very easy.

If you want to show your computer screen,

then you push Computer.

If you want to show a DVD, then you push DVD and Play.

And so it's very intuitive and almost all of the faculty

there get it from the first attempt.

But again, sometimes some of those classes can be very

interactive and we want the faculty to pay attention to

the content and what they're doing.

So we take over the management of the classroom from the

classroom control room.

So it's your philosophy in going with a built-in type

system like Mediasite and your video conferencing--

you said this before, but now I get it-- you're saying that

not only is learning curve important for faculty but it

also makes them able to not be distracted in the classroom by

the technology.

They can still teach the people locally well.

You said it correctly.

Our philosophy is that the faculty need to worry about

the content and delivering the content to students.

The technology is something that we can handle for them.

And also if it's something that they have to do, then we

look for technology that is non-intrusive, very easy to

use, and doesn't take much from the classroom time.

Good.

There are two related content management questions.

Would the principles that you've used

at Washington State--

you mentioned Blackboard.

You mentioned ANGEL.

My friend Paco asks, hey, would that work the same with

eCollege or other LMS, CMS or campus portal

systems, do you think?

While I'm not really familiar with eCollege and another LMS

systems, I think the concept is the same because, as long

as you can put in a link for an RSS feed within your

content management system or LMS, the same principle works

because it's just a link to an RSS feed that points the

students to the lecture directory.

Joshua had a question about your control

rooms that you've mentioned.

Are there multiple master control rooms--

like a control room that controls x number of

classrooms--

or do you have one master control room that you were

talking that can look into every

classroom that has Mediasite?

Yes, we have one central control room that we can look

at any class, but we also have a backup control room in our

nursing building, should do we need to handle more classes

that we can from the central control room.

But from any station in the control room, we can see and

manage any of our classrooms. And our operators usually

manage multiple classrooms at same time.

So centralizing the control room really helped us achieve

staffing efficiencies and scheduling efficiencies.

OK.

There's two quick questions.

I think I can answer them.

One is, can faculty create multiple folders or RSS feeds

for different courses.

And the answer is yes, they can.

One course can belong to multiple folders or categories

and vice versa.

So you have a lot of granular flexibility.

Another quick question that came in that said, when people

are using your desktop software strategy of calling

in with Polycom CMA and it's being fed into the Mediasite,

is there any additional Mediasite

cost relative to that?

And the answer's no.

The way they're using it, if there's no additional

Mediasite cost involved in that.

Another person asked, curious who brought the academic

technology team to the H1N1 preparedness table.

I guess at their campus, it might not be assumed that the

academic technology team should be involved in that

policy, necessarily.

So how did that happen at your campus?

Interesting question.

And yes, I am aware, always the IT people and the academic

technologies people are the forgotten people until they're

needed and never are at the planning table.

The credit goes to, really, our administration and our

leadership in realizing that technology--

academic and infrastructure both--

are really a core component of the total campus.

And so we are always at the table whenever there is

planning happening and strategizing.

So both academic technology and infrastructure technology

people serve on the chancellor's

cabinet and are connected.

And I think, yes, I agree with you.

We are unique in that.

But I think, more and more, the universities are

realizing that IT--

academic and research and infrastructure--

is a strategic partner in the total education mission of the

university.

Another question that has come up from multiple people, but a

gentleman from Lane Community College asks this question.

Speaking of the graph, interested in hearing what was

happening with on-demand viewership versus synchronous,

or live, viewership.

If you know, are you noticing that students are actually

going back and re-watching the lectures, or are they watching

them for the first time.

What's your gut?

What do your metrics tell you?

We are seeing the on-demand viewership

has the largest portion.

Very few of our users use the live viewing and I suspect

that our students who are at a distance site or can't get to

a place where there is video conferencing available to

participate in the classroom, they're viewing live.

This brings to mind the question that I always get

asked, is that, does this affect attendance at all?

I get asked that all the time.

And frankly, we have not seen any drop in attendance at all.

The students use this to augment the lecture time in

the classroom.

And they use it to review for tests and quizzes and so on

and so forth.

And we find that our ESL students really benefit

greatly from this because they're learning two things.

They're learning the English language and also the medical

terminology at the same time.

So they really need the extra time to go watch the lectures

and listen to them and spend more time

comprehending the content.

OK.

We're getting just a swath of questions and I'm trying to

conglomerate them.

So the teacher teaches with the Mediasite built in for

lecture capture.

Whatever they could project is captured by the Mediasite--

whatever would normally be on the projector, whether they're

doing 3-D demos or whatever gets captured.

But one set of questions is, how do you keep

the lecture on camera?

Are you using automatic systems?

Are you using personnel to film them?

Are you using preset camera views?

All of the above?

What your philosophy on that?

Actually, there is a technology behind that.

We have switchers and mixers that allow us to take whatever

the source for content is, whether it's the instructor

talking or whether the instructor switches to a

document camera and they may switch to a computer.

And they may bring a model and show it on the podium under

the camera--

the document camera.

And so all of these sources feed into a mixer, which

ultimately ends up in the video conferencing codec.

And we take that output from there into the Mediasite.

Fair enough.

I think the last question I'll ask is this.

If you had it to do all over again--

because some of the people are just starting out, and so a

lot of the questions are, if you were beginning from

scratch, would you think lecture capture should be a

part of an H1N1 continuity plan?

And B, what would be the most important three things that

somebody should think about when they're

choosing the approach?

From my perspective, yes, I do believe that lecture capture

should be part of academic continuity planning.

That said, it really depends on whether you do a lecture

capture or you do it another method is that, is content

important to you-- the clarity of images,

the clarity of content?

Do you want the students to experience the classroom as it

was presented or you don't care about that?

So it really is a decision of, what do you want to extend to

the students?

In my case, and my campus's case, is that we want to

extend a rich experience.

We don't want this student to miss on the experience of the

classroom and what is happening in the classroom.

So lecture capture was very important to us.

And if we are going to extend it in case of illness--

which, students and people get ill at any time.

It doesn't have to take H1N1.

Just a seasonal flu and you could be absent from school

for five days or so.

And in the medical field, you miss a lot when you are sick

for five days.

So we wanted to capture that classroom experience and make

it available to the student when they are recouped and can

come back and make up the time and view the lectures again.

I'm sorry the second half of the question is--

You answered some of it which was, I asked what would the

important principles to keep in mind, if you had it to do

over again, the first thing you said is content clarity.

If what you project in the classroom experience is

important, make that high on your list on how you record

the classes.

Absolutely.

Anything else?

Sure.

It was important to us that we can do multiple things with

one technology.

As I said, we captured the classroom.

We also podcast. So we don't have to have a different

encoder to podcast. And we also stream it live and

archive it, and so we didn't have to have a streaming

machine that does the live content and then upload and

archive the file later on.

It's all done automatically.

And so we like that we can have all

three in one solution.

Fantastic.

Well, that's fantastic insight that you've given us with your

experience.

As one of the most prolific and fastest up and running

Mediasite users in, quite frankly, an incredibly

advanced customer set that we have. But Washington State got

up and running and is capturing an insane amount of

content from 8:00 to 5:00 every day or

something crazy like that.

Sometimes we have classrooms that are occupied from 8:00 AM

until 10:00 PM

So record early.

Record often.

Try to have an academic year available offline, side by

side, if your course design allows it or if

it's more ad hoc.

Be prepared to use other technologies like video

conferencing technologies to allow people to participate

when they're not at home and can't get to a classroom.

I think that effectively sums up some of the strategic

points that you talked about today.

I'd like to thank you for coming all the way out here

from the West Coast.

Thank you, Sean.

I appreciate that and I am pleased to share my

perspective with my colleagues out there.

And as I said, that last slide of my presentation has my

contact information and I'll be glad to talk with you

offline if you have any questions.

Or if you want me to connect you with our media engineers

or our network engineers, we'll be glad to do that.

Well, I'm glad you said that, because we're giving out your

email address.

Anyone who asked a question that we did not get to who

provided their email address, we're going to get back to you

that way and will pass them along to my guest who's been

kind enough to agree to help us with the answers offline.

I would like to thank, once again, my guest. I would like

to thank Sonic Foundry event services for producing another

great webcast. And most of all, I'd like to thank all of

you for joining us.

We'll see you the next time.