How VACU Scaled High-Quality, Multilingual Learning While Reducing Content Creation Effort by 70%
Virginia Christian University is a Christian educational institution dedicated to providing biblical and theological education to students worldwide. The university offers online courses in systematic theology, counseling, and Christian life studies, serving a diverse, global student population.
The Challenge: Decentralized content creation and inconsistent quality
Before adopting Elai, Virginia Christian University faced significant challenges in delivering consistent, professional online course content. Faculty had previously independently created their own video materials using various platforms. Some used YouTube, others Google Meet, and some relied on different recording tools entirely. This decentralized approach resulted in inconsistent quality, varying formats, and a lack of institutional ownership over course materials.
Additionally, as a Christian university with religious content at the core of their curriculum, Virginia Christian University encountered unexpected content restrictions with their initial platform, Synthesia.
The university needed a solution that could:
- Centralize video production for consistent quality
- Support religious and theological content without restrictions
- Enable multilingual delivery to reach their global student base
- Reduce the time burden on professors
- Provide professional, engaging content for asynchronous learning
The Solution: Finding the right platform for education
After experiencing content restrictions with their initial platform, Virginia Christian University discovered Elai and immediately recognized it as the ideal solution for their needs.
“The biggest reason we chose Elai was the value. It provides everything that we need for the video content we are creating,” explained Urna Myagmar, Admission Officer at Virginia Christian University.
The university adopted Elai to create centralized video lectures for their online courses. Now, professors provide their teaching materials to the admissions team, who then produce professional video content using Elai’s AI avatars and text-to-speech capabilities. This shift transformed Virginia Christian University’s approach from decentralized, professor-created content to institutionally owned, professionally produced video lectures.
The platform’s ease of use was particularly valuable for Virginia Christian University, as the team had no prior professional background in video production.
“From the beginning, Elai has been easy to understand, easy to work with, and easy to handle,” Urna shared about her experience learning the platform.
The Results: Dramatic time savings and enhanced professionalism
The impact of centralizing video production through Elai has been transformative for faculty and students at Virginia Christian University.
Professor Time Savings:
The most significant result has been the dramatic reduction in time professors spend on content creation. By shifting video production to a centralized model, professors now focus their energy on directly supporting students.
“Professors now save up to 70% of their time,” Urna reported. “They can spend more time on grading and communicating with the students.”
Faculty have responded enthusiastically to the change. “Professors are satisfied, because it’s making life much easier, saving time and work.”
Student Experience:
Students have embraced the flexible, asynchronous learning model enabled by Elai’s video content. The platform has allowed Virginia Christian University to deliver course materials that students can access on their own schedule, regardless of their location.
“From the students, they like it. Whenever they want, wherever they are, they can watch the video and do the assignments,” Urna explained.
Multilingual Reach:
One of Elai’s most powerful features for Virginia Christian University has been its ability to support multilingual content creation. The university currently delivers video lectures in seven different languages, dramatically expanding their reach to international students. Native speaker editors review the auto-translated content to ensure quality and cultural appropriateness.
Professional Quality:
The centralized approach has elevated the overall quality and professionalism of Virginia Christian University’s online courses.
“All the professors were doing different things on different platforms, so making a central place for the videos for all the professors from the school is more professional,” Urna emphasized.
The Future: Expanding capabilities and course offerings
Looking ahead, VACU plans to expand their use of Elai. The university is currently focused on systematic theology courses but is preparing to shift into counseling programs, where they plan to incorporate Elai’s interactive features and embedded quizzes to enhance student engagement.
The ongoing nature of content creation means VACU will continue to update and refine their video library while expanding course offerings.
For institutions considering a similar transformation, Urna offers strong encouragement: “Elai is very understandable and easy to use, even if you don’t have any background experience.”
After a year of using Elai, the university has transformed many of their courses into engaging video lectures that serve global learners.
