ASU School of Engineering Posts 10,000th Lecture with Mediasite

• By Dian Schaffhauser
• 11/07/08

Students at the Arizona State University (ASU) Ira A. Fulton School of Engineering now have access to more online lectures than any other university in the country, according to Sonic Foundry, the company that provides the Webcasting platform the school uses. The school recently recorded its 10,000th lecture with Sonic Foundry's Mediasite.

Since 2003, ASU faculty members have used Mediasite to support 13 graduate degrees, recording and streaming about 60 course sections each semester for an average of 180 hours per week.

"We've been producing a lot of content since day one, and the scalability and reliability of Mediasite has been critical for that. The fact that Mediasite requires very little effort for our team to be able to capture, produce, package, and deliver a lecture gives a small organization like ours a strategic advantage," said Octavio Heredia, associate director for extended education at the School of Engineering. "The platform is very stable and it allows us to put our strategic thinking into what's next, such as how do we improve our student experience as we deliver our in-house research, knowledge and faculty expertise to a global audience."

"Supporting the structure of the class with Mediasite really levels the playing field for the distance students, who are every bit as good--and in many cases better--than campus students," said Douglas Montgomery, regents professor of industrial engineering and statistics. "Learning via Mediasite, they do well on exams, show tremendous insight on projects and ask provoking questions."

Lectures are available via streaming media, which, according to the university, requires high-speed Internet access. A sample broadcast available on the ASU site includes Webcast snips with a small window on the left part of the interface showing videocasts of faculty members speaking to the class and a larger portion of the interface showing the feed from overhead projectors and software.