New term at Univ of Leeds with VLE

MADISON, USA: Sonic Foundry, Inc., a player in video creation and management solutions, has been successfully rolled out at the University of Leeds in the UK following the new start of term.

The technology has been produced and overseen by the global Sonic Foundry using its Mediasite Enterprise Video Platform. Mediasite Recorders capture and manage the audio and visual content in teaching rooms for students to watch live or on-demand within the University’s virtual learning environment (VLE), as explained. In addition, a desktop capture software tool, My Mediasite, gives faculty and students the ability to create and share presentations from desktops or mobile devices.

The system gives students access to video and audio recordings of many of their lectures and other teaching activities, providing a flexible learning experience. Students can now use the system to return to and review previous lectures that may have been on a particularly complex topic or to simply use it for revision purposes, the announcement added.

“The new technology gives students the chance to learn and study at their own pace and will let them revisit course content at any point in the year,” said Professor Neil Morris, Director of Digital Learning at the University of Leeds. “This campus-wide deployment of new digital tools has been rolled out to ensure that students can access and benefit from the new system from the beginning of term.”

The University has invested more than $3 million to set up the new system which will record up to 50,000 hours of teaching activity every academic year  Once lectures have been captured, they will be made available within the University’s VLE.

“There is a lot of excitement about the new lecture capture system – the system is not just a simple and effective way of recording lectures, but opens up a whole new world of teaching techniques,” said Dr. Christopher Hassall, Lecturer in Animal Biology at the University of Leeds. “I have heard a number of staff talking enthusiastically about trying innovative approaches to teaching that simply would not have been possible without this big investment. For example, the traditional model of teaching would be to give a lecture during class and send the students away to read around the topic. With the new system we can share pre-recorded lectures with students before class and use contact time for discussions and other activities that help to develop learning from the recorded lectures. It is certainly an interesting time to be teaching at Leeds, and I know that the students are going to be impressed.”