From simplifying workflows to seamless integrations and enhancing accessibility, educators and institutions are constantly discovering new ways to enhance their teaching experience with interactive video. At our 2022 EMEA User Conference, leaders from Keele University and Brookes University sat down with Panopto product specialists to share how they are creating video workflows that enable learning success.

Simplifying Workflows

Implementing a simple workflow is essential for educational institutions to effectively manage their video content.

Implementing Panopto at Keele University helped shift the focus back to the learning process. Automating the scheduling, recording, and distribution process significantly reduces manual efforts and empowers educators to focus on what truly matters: teaching.

“When I joined the team, I realized that we needed to look at ways to improve the technology and support we have in place,” says Nick Vaughn, Senior Applications manager at Keele University. “That’s when we looked at a number of lecture capture solutions – Panopto was the best out of all the ones we looked at.”

Automation was a crucial part in simplifying the workflow at Keele. That’s why the university replaced all of its existing OpenCast lecture capture equipment with Panopto – a fully-automated solution. Now Panopto schedules the recordings at Keele and pushes them out to the university’s virtual learning environments (VLE).

“We try to automate as much as we can. [We] try to take as much of the manual work off the lecturers so they can focus on the teaching, walk into a room, see it’s scheduled, and know it’s going to record,” says Vaughn. “They don’t have to worry about logging in – it’s just there working.”

Similarly, Brookes University embraced a software-based workflow, taking advantage of Panopto’s all-in-one platform. “Our workflow is very simple. We’ve nailed the ‘keep it simple’ principle,” says Harry Kalantzi, Team Leader, Digital Services at Brookes University. “It’s completely software-based, we don’t have any [external] recorders.”

Panopto’s built-in recording allowed the university to transition smoothly to online teaching during the pandemic without the need for complex hardware setups. “We record everything, which has increased our creation hours massively for an institution of our size,” says Kalantzi.

By eliminating the need for separate recorders and automation for physical lectures, Panopto empowers educators to effortlessly capture and share their knowledge, ensuring an easy learning experience for students.

Seamless Integrations – from the LMS to Video Conferencing Tools

Managing multiple meeting software platforms and VLEs can be a daunting task for educational institutions. The solution? An edtech ecosystem where all of your software and tools can work together. 

At Keele University, Panopto’s integration with Microsoft Teams created a seamless learning experience. The institution was able to automatically pull in recordings from Teams meetings, making them easily accessible through the platform. This simplified the management of meeting software, allowing educators to focus on teaching rather than worrying about manually transferring recordings.

“Over the pandemic staff were able to teach a class via Teams, connect the app to Panopto, and then automatically pull in the recordings from Teams into a folder into Panopto which automatically went into the different VLE’s,” says Vaughn.

At Brookes University, Panopto’s integration with Zoom helps streamline recordings for both academic lectures and professional services meetings. “We had incredible help from Panopto to set up the integration with our VLE and Zoom for everything to work as expected,”says Kalantzi. “We couldn’t have done it on our own.”

“Once you have the integration between the conferencing tool and Panopto, those recordings are going to go to Panopto automatically,” says Kalantzi. “That’s the simplest workflow you can have. And everyone can handle it.”

The best thing about Panopto’s integrations? You won’t even notice they’re there. 

“The VLE video conferencing tool integration is quite simple,” says Kalantzi. “Anyone who has a role in the teaching course can schedule Zoom meetings. And they don’t have to do anything for the recording to go to Panopto. There’s only one workflow to think about: To schedule your meetings in Moodle and make them available in the LMS.”

Enhancing Accessibility and Transcription Capabilities

Accessibility is a crucial aspect of education, opening doors to knowledge and empowering individuals of diverse backgrounds and needs. “All sessions in Panopto are captioned with Automatic Speech Recognition, which is extremely accurate. The provider we have – at least in English – is more accurate than Google or Amazon. And that’s extremely well-researched and tested,” says Neil Burdess, Panopto Product Manager.

Panopto’s commitment to accessibility extends further with the ability to implement custom dictionaries, which cater to specialized terms in different disciplines. This ensures that technical terms and jargon are transcribed accurately, improving the learning experience for students in specialized fields.

“[Custom dictionaries] can also be really useful within different faculties, especially if you’re a medical specialist or an engineering specialist where you have very specific technical terms that might not be picked up correctly,” says Burdess. “It might be close, but if you want to get that right that’s an excellent way to do it.”

The Panopto editor offers additional accessibility features, allowing users to manually edit captions to meet specific needs. With the ability to search for and replace specific words throughout the entire video, the transcription editing process becomes more efficient and user-friendly.

“If there is an individual word that [the automatic captioning tool] repeatedly got wrong you can do a find and replace,” says Burdess. “For example, a surname that might be commonly misinterpreted. You could find it and replace it with every instance of [the correct word] throughout the entire file.”

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By simplifying workflows and enhancing efficiency, educators at Keele University and Brookes University showcased the transformative power of Panopto’s all-in-one platform and its potential to revolutionize video management in educational institutions.

Panopto empowers educators to create an inclusive learning environment, where information is readily available, workflows are streamlined, and students can thrive academically. It is through tools like Panopto that universities can embrace innovation and pave the way for a brighter future in education.

 

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