Beloit College Mindset List Announced Via Mediasite Webcast

MADISON, Wis. – August 23, 2011 – Beloit College announced its 14th annual Mindset List via webcast using Mediasite by Sonic Foundry, Inc.(NASDAQ: SOFO), the recognized market leader for rich media webcasting, lecture capture and knowledge management.

The webcast is now available at http://sofo.com/537ca.

The Mindset List, conceived by Beloit’s former Public Affairs Director Ron Nief and Keefer Professor of the Humanities Tom McBride, provides a look at the cultural touchstones that shape the lives of students entering college this fall. It was originally created as a reminder to faculty to be aware of dated references, and quickly became a catalog of the rapidly changing worldview of each new generation. Mindset List websites at Beloit College, Mindset Moment, the Mediasite webcast and their Facebook page receive more than a million hits annually.

“The single most frequent comment we get is from people asking if we’re trying to make them feel old with this list. Every year when they read it they feel more and more out of touch,” said McBride. “It’s not that we’re all getting old. It’s that the pace of culture and information change is faster than it ever was before.”

“The themes that show up in this year’s Mindset List are that it’s always been a different world for these students. It’s significant that this class was born the year the internet became accessible to the public so there’s always been an internet ramp on the information superhighway. The internet has always been a part of their daily lives,” said Nief.

Some of the authors’ favorites from the Mindset List for the Internet Class of 2015 include:

• They “swipe” cards, not merchandise.
• Their school’s “blackboards” have always been getting smarter.
• “Don’t touch that dial!”….what dial?
• O.J. Simpson has always been looking for the killers of Nicole Simpson and Ronald Goldman.
• Women have never been too old to have children.
• Japan has always been importing rice.
• We have never asked, and they have never had to tell.
• They’ve always gone to school with Mohammed and Jesus.
• There has never been an official Communist Party in the Soviet Union.
• Faux Christmas trees have always outsold real ones.
• Music has always been available via free downloads.
• Sears has never sold anything out of a Big Book that could also serve as a doorstop.
• Refer to LBJ, and they might assume you’re talking about LeBron James.
• Electric cars have always been humming in relative silence on the road.

New this year, Nief and McBride have released a new book based on the list, The Mindset Lists of American History: From Typewriters to Text Messages, What Ten Generations of Americans Think Is Normal (John Wiley & Sons).

“We’ve been following the Mindset List since its early years and believe it offers value not only to faculty on the popular perspectives of the class of 2015, but also to the technology partners of colleges and universities. As an educational technology company, we believe it’s critical to pay attention to the mindset of students in order to understand the ultimate consumer of the learning innovations we produce,” said Sean Brown, vice president of education for Sonic Foundry.

The authors use Mediasite by Sonic Foundry for their webcast. Trusted by more than 900 colleges and universities, the patented Mediasite webcasting and content management system quickly and cost-effectively automates the capture, management, delivery and search of rich media presentations that combine audio, video and accompanying graphics for live or on-demand viewing.