By Brent A. Anders and Artur Gregorian, Kansas State University 

During the summer of 2014, Kansas State University (K-State) conducted a pilot program using the Mediasite Instructional Capture System. This system captures instruction conducted within a course via video of the instructor and any other content displayed (Power Point, screen capture, document camera, etc.). The capture of the instruction is then made available to the student online through any device (computer, tablet, smartphone). Within a classroom, capture is conducted via a dedicated Mediasite device, but a software solution can be used by instructional capture sessions created via a personal computer at home or within an office. 

These presentations are “student-centered” in that there is a main video and one or more smaller videos of the instructional content displayed at the same time. This allows students to dynamically manipulate the screen to make any of the videos the main focus and display it larger. Additionally, the presentation speed can be controlled (faster or slower) by the viewer (student), without it affecting the audio quality. Analytics on which students view what videos, for how long and how often are then provided to the instructor. 

At the conclusion of the 2014 summer pilot, a survey was given to participating students to obtain their reactions to the Mediasite system. Impressively, students reported a 96% positive feeling with Mediasite. They were very satisfied with the system. Students (82%) found the system very easy to use (12% were neutral) and 96% of students were favorable about the look and feel of the system with 4% who were neutral (0% rated the look and feel as negative). About 70% of the students indicated that they enjoyed being able to dynamically manipulate the screen so as to make whichever video stream the focus and larger (30% were neutral, 0% were negative). Students (83%) liked being able to control the playback speed of the presentation (17% were neutral, 0% were negative).  Another available tool (if the instructor uses it), is the inclusion of chapters. This allows students the ability to jump to sections that have been properly indexed. Approximately 60% of students commented favorably about this feature (40% neutral, 0% negative). This might have been due to the fact that not all instructors were using this feature. A final question posed to the students was “Would you recommend that other instructors use Mediasite?” and 90% of all students surveyed wanted other instructors to use this system.  Several students wrote in the survey stating that they very much wanted all of their instructors to use this system in all of their classes. 

Some of the areas for improvement that students listed were: the ability to offer more camera angles of the instruction (this can be done depending on the model of the Mediasite device used in the classroom), use by all instructors at the University (a matter of implementation), and even faster upload speeds (based off of user connection speed and presentation settings).

The pilot study was very positive and has resulted in Kansas State University implementing Mediasite campus wide. All instructors now have access to the software version and four classroom devices (more to be purchased soon) are now available in various classrooms.

The software version of Mediasite has been adopted across campus with lots of future implementation in the works. Various pedagogical approaches are being used with Mediasite to include: flipped classroom (lectures viewed online, classroom time for discussion/hands-on work), additional class review (especially by international students), content supplementation, test review, answering of message board questions, self analysis, and use when instructor is planning to be gone (conferences or other absences).