Flipped Classroom

USC Keck School of Medicine Taps Wirecast for Lectures on Demand

• By Rhea Kelly
• 06/16/16

Instructors at USC's Keck School of Medicine now have a new resource for flipping the classroom. Using Wirecast streaming production software from Telestream, the institution's Preventive Medicine Soto Studio is creating on-demand video lectures for the Master of Public Health Online Program as well as instructional content for multiple departments.

"Our goal is to produce videos of our college lectures that offer the same high-quality production standards that viewers have come to expect from a TV newscast," explained Gary San Angel, distance education specialist/media technology, Department of Preventive Medicine at Keck School, in a prepared statement.

On average, the Soto Studio is producing about 20 finished hours of HD video lectures and webcasts per week. Wirecast's video production tools enable users to switch between cameras; key in graphics on a greenscreen; incorporate program opens, closes and music tracks; create real-time transitional effects; display titles, lower third supers and full-screen text; and more.

"Wirecast makes it easy for us to go beyond just showing static images or PowerPoint slides on screen accompanied by a voice-over," said San Angel. "We can now produce videos that feature the professors interacting with their slides and other visuals, interviewing their guests, and other dynamic presentation formats."

Most of the school's video productions are completed in a few hours and ready to use the next day. "Once produced, the video lectures for the Master of Public Health Online Program are delivered to the department's learning management system and integrated into each course, while lectures intended for on-campus students are uploaded to a local Mediasite server as well as a Vimeo cloud-based server that enables password-protected access on demand," according to a press release. "Other instructional videos are accessible to students on demand via Ustream, YouTube and Vimeo, or delivered as live webcasts."

"As a top-tier university, we believe that high-quality video is key to providing our students in the traditional classroom as well as online learners a top-tier educational experience that engages and enlightens them," said Shubha Kumar, assistant professor of clinical preventive medicine and director of the Master of Public Health Online Program at Keck School. "Because the online videos created with Wirecast are so professionally produced, our faculty often end up using them in their campus-based teaching as well, and more and more of our colleagues across campus are interested in using this powerful video resource to better reach and educate their students."