University of Washington-Seattle Uses Mediasite for Flipped Classroom, Lecture Capture and Special Events

MADISON, Wis. — June 19, 2012 — Sonic Foundry, Inc. (NASDAQ: SOFO), the trusted market leader for lecture capture, enterprise and event webcasting, today announced that The Foster School of Business, the School of Medicine and the Professional and Continuing Education’s EDGE Program at the University of Washington-Seattle have each selected Mediasite for lecture capture, flipped classroom instruction, special events and inter-departmental collaboration.

The Foster School of Business deployed Mediasite as part of a new 135,000 square-foot building, PACCAR Hall, which was designed by Seattle-based LMN Architects to embody the business school’s focus on leadership development, strategic thinking and collaboration. It offers a combination of U-shaped tiered classrooms, meeting spaces, a 250-seat auditorium and student breakout rooms and is equipped with a wide range of educational technology including Mediasite in each classroom.

“It really was important for us to match the technology with the state-of-the-art facilities, and to upgrade from the VHS recorders we had been using in the classroom. After sourcing several solutions we ultimately chose Mediasite because it’s a lot more robust and a lot smoother,” said Tim Uomoto, senior computer specialist in the Foster School of Business. “Using VHS was really manually intensive, and we were dealing with limited resources. So our goal was to streamline and automate everything as much as possible.”

Uomoto’s team looked within the University of Seattle for inspiration on how to seamlessly integrate Mediasite into his classrooms. His colleagues in the School of Medicine and the Professional and Continuing Education’s EDGE (Education at a Distance for Growth and Excellence) Program were also managing large Mediasite deployments.

EDGE provides multimedia and lecture capture services to distance learners at the University of Washington via live and on-demand Mediasite webcasts. Multiple departments work with EDGE on lecture capture services to ensure that distance education students receive academic experiences equal to those of students on campus. The EDGE facility uses three Mediasite Recorders located in a control station where student operators and EDGE staff record every class. EDGE will soon migrate to Mediasite 6, allowing students to watch lectures from their mobile devices.

“Mediasite is an invaluable educational technology platform for us, ensuring that regardless of where our students are learning, either remotely or in the classroom, their educations are identical. Everyone receives the same high-quality experience and Mediasite webcasts allow students to review the material at any time,” said Dave Coffey, video and multimedia systems engineer for EDGE.

Jason Reep, assistant director for the School of Medicine, Academic and Learning Technologies, who helped implement Mediasite in EDGE, now works in the School of Medicine, where Mediasite has been used for four years. The school uses Mediasite 6 in two lecture halls and makes the webcasts available on-demand. The University of Washington is the only medical school in five states – Washington, Wyoming, Alaska, Montana and Idaho – so it delivers Mediasite webcasts to students in the entire region. There are separate teachers at each of the universities delivering their own lectures to their first-year medical students, but all the lectures that are recorded in Seattle are shared. The School of Medicine has two lecture halls with Mediasite RL and ML Recorders supporting about six small group classrooms. It also uses Mediasite to record special events and speakers for the greater UW-Seattle campus.

The School of Medicine is currently involved in a re-accreditation process that occurs every 10 years. One of the pushes for the school is the flipped classroom. Flipped instruction is a model where faculty pre-record lectures and students watch before class. Classroom time is then dedicated to dynamic discussion and interactions about what they learned.

“The School of Medicine and EDGE decided to implement Mediasite because the hardware and server software was superior in the market, and still is. Students are using Mediasite as a primary way to learn and have come to rely heavily on the recorded content while they study,” Reep said. “Plus Mediasite allows us to reach medical students beyond the borders of our Seattle campus to students in the entire Pacific Northwest region.”

To make video webcasting of lectures as automated and faculty-friendly as possible, the schools developed brief training programs, bringing faculty together either in large groups or via Mediasite training modules. So far more than 500 faculty members have participated in either the in-person or online training.

“The University of Washington-Seattle’s Mediasite deployment in its medicine, business and continuing education schools allows students, regardless of where they are in the world, to receive the same quality education as students in the Seattle classrooms,” said Gary Weis, chief executive officer for Sonic Foundry. “Their willingness to embrace the flipped classroom, video-based instruction and collaborative, regional academic partnerships are true hallmarks of the university of the future, and we are proud to be their trusted partner to enhance both student access and achievement.”