Western New Mexico University Transforms Distance Learning with Mediasite Join

ORLANDO, Fla. UBTech Booth #301 — June 12, 2017 — With multiple rural satellite campuses for a distributed student body — including a high percentage of non-traditional students — Western New Mexico University relies heavily on video and web conferencing for instruction. Using Mediasite Join by Sonic Foundry, Inc. (NASDAQ: SOFO) the trusted global leader for video creation and management solutions, the university cost-effectively connects its instructors and students in real time, capturing collaborative classrooms and turning them into rich, searchable video on-demand.

Building on the market-leading Mediasite Video Platform, Mediasite Join extends the value of unified communications by seamlessly integrating with leading conference services. The university has been using Mediasite since 2010 and added Mediasite Join to its suite of solutions two years ago. Now, Mediasite Join is available campus-wide. Faculty report better student pass rates since implementing Mediasite Join and the university reaps the benefits of being able to integrate its existing Polycom and Zoom video conferencing systems into the solution, and cost-effectively offer a state-of-the-art technology learning environment to its students.

“We provide instruction to a very rural area, covering a vast area of New Mexico. Because we need to meet synchronously with students, regardless of location, our video conferencing program is very big, and lecture capture is important. That’s where Mediasite Join came in,” said April Hanson, Video Communications Manager, WNMU IT. “We are already paying a lot of money for our video conferencing systems, and I needed a way to leverage what we already had. Being able to plug in Polycom and Zoom into our existing Mediasite Video Platform was huge.”

Courses that use video conference are considered face-to-face for matriculating students. For on-site students physically in classrooms, the university uses Mediasite for automated lecture capture. Students attend the traditional classroom, and the on-demand Mediasite recordings are available as a study tool in the university’s Canvas learning management system.

Students enrolled in WNMU’s online program work on their own time, and faculty either record their lectures via Mediasite in their classrooms or from their desktops. Those lectures are immediately uploaded to Canvas and available for review on-demand.

“Ever since professors started using Mediasite for lecture capture, they’ve reported increased improvement on student grades. The Mediasite analytics are important to faculty members, because they are able to see what students are watching and what portions of the video are most popular. They’re able to tailor their teaching accordingly,” Hanson said.

“Mediasite Join has been very easy to implement and introduce to faculty, and there is a great demand for it. They don’t even know they’re using Mediasite in classrooms with recorders – they just click a button, and their class is recorded,” she continued. “Using video during collaborative classes and meetings is extremely valuable, and students love it. At first, like any new technology, faculty worried they’d be replaced by the recordings. They quickly found that course quality improved with Mediasite, and students asked for the video recordings.”

“A recent Wainhouse Research report, State of Collaborative Education and eLearning 2017 – in which Sonic Foundry is recognized as a leader– cites that the convergence of distance and online education, brick-and-mortar education and consumerization of educational technology is resulting in a great demand from both faculty and students for the use of collaborative classroom technology,” said Gary Weis, CEO, Sonic Foundry. “Western New Mexico University is ahead of the curve, recognizing the importance of capturing and preserving the collaboration that occurs over video conferencing.”

Trusted by more than 1,500 colleges and universities, the Mediasite Video Platform quickly and cost-effectively automates the capture, management, delivery and search of live and on-demand videos for campus events, lecture capture and flipped learning.

About Western New Mexico University
Western New Mexico University has served the people of the state of New Mexico and its surrounding areas as a comprehensive, regional, rural, public coeducational university since 1893 and serves a student body diverse in age, culture, language and ethnic background.