University of Florida Installs My Mediasite as Part of its Enterprise Video Strategy

ANAHEIM, Calif. EDUCAUSE Booth #1501 — October 15, 2013 — A new desktop capture system by Sonic Foundry, Inc. (NASDAQ: SOFO), the trusted leader for video content management and webcasting solutions, allows faculty, staff and students at University of Florida to create and share videos, lectures and assignments wherever they are.

The university deployed My Mediasite campus wide, giving users access to record, upload, manage and publish their own videos using their laptop’s built-in camera. Because the tool is backed by Mediasite Enterprise Video Platform, the content is searchable, secure and organized in one place.

“The Mediasite Desktop Recorder in My Mediasite is easier for us to maintain than other software-based options. The app is just so easy to use, I know even our most tech-challenged staff will quickly adopt it. And because it’s a web client, our user-generated content will automatically upload to Mediasite,” said Brian Smith, UF’s IT specialist. “The analytics of My Mediasite was a big selling point so faculty can easily keep track of who is watching their lectures and how much.”

The presentations will be closed captioned, and students can search video for keywords with My Mediasite’s powerful optical character recognition that automatically indexes slide text.

The university began implementing My Mediasite into classrooms this semester and in the next few months plans to put it in the hands of hundreds of people on campus. Currently the university has 16,000 presentations on its server, and Smith said My Mediasite will lead to even more content being generated at an even faster pace. To date the amount of Mediasite video increases nearly 85% each year, and views grow 330% year over year.

University of Florida has used Mediasite since 2004 to capture what’s happening in lecture halls, classrooms and special events on campus, such as homecoming parades, senate meetings, commencements, alumni events, presidential search sessions, psychiatry grand rounds and much more. Those recordings are available to students live and on-demand on their desktops and mobile devices.

“Before Mediasite, our students watched lectures. Now, they experience lectures,” Smith said. “Mediasite’s ability to clearly display content by separating it from video in a rich media format is one of the innovative features that have helped to improve academic video on our campus.”

“Student demand is pushing video-based online learning to the top of institutions’ technology plans. By introducing My Mediasite, University of Florida is making it even easier for students, faculty and staff to communicate and learn via academic video, regardless of time and location,” said Gary Weis, chief executive officer of Sonic Foundry.

Trusted by 1,200 colleges and universities, the patented Mediasite webcasting and video content management system quickly and cost-effectively automates the capture, management, delivery and search of live and on-demand videos and rich media.