The institution
For more than fifteen years, Auburn University has used Panopto as an integral part of teaching and learning. What began in 2009 as a lecture capture solution has since evolved into a campus-wide video platform supporting active learning, flipped instruction, accessibility, faculty innovation, and student-created assignments. Instructional technologies at other institutions come and go, but Panopto has remained a constant at Auburn. It has grown alongside the university’s teaching and learning ecosystem, adapting to students’ evolving needs and the shifting capabilities of education technology.
Much of that growth has been guided by the Biggio Center for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning, Auburn’s academic innovation hub, which supports more than 1,500 faculty, staff, and graduate teaching assistants in designing learning experiences that encourage participation, engagement, and deeper understanding. Leading those efforts is Dr. Asim Ali, Executive Director of the Biggio Center and Board President of UPCEA. His guiding philosophy is simple: “Technology should never be the goal. The goal is helping students learn more effectively.” That belief shapes how Auburn evaluates every instructional technology it adopts, including video.
A teaching philosophy built around active learning
“Typically, when we want to do innovative work at any institution, we think it’s okay to go to a faculty member and ask them to figure out how to start teaching their course online, or just start using a new tool,” says Ali. “But what you’re incentivizing them to do is find the quickest way possible, not necessarily the best way possible.”
For the Biggio Center, helping faculty redesign courses, activities, and assignments that engage students more deeply and actively matters more than technology adoption itself. Video through Panopto plays a part in that work, opening up new opportunities for learning both inside and outside the classroom.
Why Auburn continues to use Panopto
At Auburn, video does more than replicate lectures online. Faculty use Panopto to move foundational instruction outside the classroom, creating more time for discussion, collaboration, and problem-solving during class time.
One example comes from a physics professor who was initially skeptical about redesigning his course around video-based instruction and Auburn’s Learning Glass Studio. This recording environment lets instructors write and illustrate concepts on a glass board while maintaining eye contact with students. After teaching the redesigned course, he reported stronger student performance on the first exam, and what surprised him more was the experience of teaching itself.
“He told me he’d never had more fun teaching,” says Ali.
Experiences like that, according to Ali, demonstrate the potential of thoughtful course design built around video. Faculty use Panopto to create short instructional videos, deliver pre-class lessons, and embed quizzes directly into learning materials, helping students arrive better prepared to engage with course concepts once class begins.
That kind of experimentation depends on faculty trusting the platform they’re building on, and Panopto’s approach to intellectual property has been central to earning that trust. Faculty retain ownership of the content they create, giving them confidence to invest time and effort into high-quality learning materials without sacrificing control of their work.
“It’s been such an important element in terms of our faculty being able to trust the technology we’re supporting for them,” says Ali. “We don’t have to make compromising decisions about our intellectual property with Panopto.”
That trust matters at scale. Auburn supports students and faculty across a wide range of programs, disciplines, and learning environments. For video to work across all of them, it has to integrate cleanly with the other technologies instructors already rely on. Panopto connects with Canvas, Zoom, and other core instructional tools at Auburn. Built-in accessibility features, like automatic captions and transcripts, help the university support a wide range of learners and advance its accessibility compliance efforts without stitching together separate tools.
“With Panopto, we have a reliable, dependable platform that interfaces with all of the other technologies that are folded into day-to-day teaching and learning across campus.”
Executive Director of the Biggio Center and Board President of UPCEA
Students benefit from that consistency, too. Because Panopto is used across the institution, they encounter the same video experience regardless of course or department, and spend less time hunting for where content lives.
Faculty also turn the camera toward students. Video assignments give them a way to demonstrate understanding, reflect on their learning, and communicate ideas beyond traditional written work, using the same platform they already use for instruction.
“We want to reduce the noise for students,” says Ali, “so they can focus on the learning, which is what it’s all about.”
What success looks like
Since adopting Panopto in 2009, Auburn has expanded its use of video from lecture capture into a core part of its teaching and learning strategy. Students have engaged with more than 3.5 million hours of video content, while faculty across disciplines use the platform to support flipped instruction, active learning, accessibility, and student-created assignments.
For Auburn, though, the most meaningful measure of success is how consistently the platform supports the university’s teaching mission. Over the past fifteen years, Auburn hasn’t had to repeatedly reevaluate its video infrastructure or manage a scattered mix of disconnected tools. Faculty trust the platform, support teams know it well, and students get a consistent experience across courses and departments.
“We get countless emails about countless different platforms, but we don’t have to bother with them,” says Ali. “We have Panopto, and we’re good. It’s nice not to have to revisit that.”
For Ali, that confidence comes from more than reliability or feature sets. “Over the years, Panopto has been true to the mission of unlocking instructors and driving effective learning through video,” he says. “I’m not going to wake up tomorrow and find out Panopto is abandoning learning, and that kind of commitment is rare.”
Fifteen years on, Auburn’s relationship with Panopto has outlasted plenty of software purchases. What’s kept it going is simple: a shared commitment to effective teaching and meaningful learning.
