This is the third in a series of 4 posts featuring Creighton University’s BlueCast lecture capture system, powered by Panopto. These posts will cover Creighton’s implementation from trial to campus-wide capture as follows:

1.     Competition and Selection
2.     Introducing Bluecast
3.     Expanding Adoption
4.     Spotlight: Creighton live streams “Match Day” ceremony with Panopto

Panopto spreads organically

After one year of Panopto deployment, Creighton University’s BlueCast Lecture system has grown from a small 5 course pilot program into an essential campus service with over 10,000 recordings. The lecture capture team from Creighton’s Division of Information Technology (DoIT) no longer needs to convince departments to adopt the technology, because students are demanding it.

“We’re often contacted by individual faculty whose students are asking to have their classroom sessions recorded,” says Rick Murch-Shafer. Just last week, a professor stopped by the DoIT office—at his students’ insistence—to learn how to record a review session later that day. “I quickly provisioned the course for him and then went to his classroom for a quick demonstration,” recalls Tobias Nownes. “When I asked him to login to the system, he just looked at me with a blank stare. He’d never used a campus computer before.”

“Even with that level of unfamiliarity,” continues Nownes, “he was ready to go within minutes and successfully recorded his review session later that afternoon.” Application specialist Brent Saltzman remembers sitting down to his computer at 8am the next morning and seeing 15 students reviewing the new review session simultaneously. An easy success for the professor quickly became a critical resource for his students.

Freeing up class time

As Instructional designers at Creighton, Murch-Shafer and Nownes help faculty develop online courses for various programs across campus. Most of the content is pre-built, including the lectures. Once recorded, professors are able to use the same “evergreen content” rolling from semester to semester, especially for 100 level courses where the themes don’t change as much. If the material becomes dated or a shift in focus necessitates new content, instructors can edit and add to their existing sessions or record new ones.

“Because of the flexibility of the system, faculty are now able to effect a kind of “time shift,” reflects Nownes. “Students watch the Panopto lecture before class, and the instructor can address points of confusion directed by the students in the classroom.”

“We’re seeing this a lot now,” agrees Murch-Shafer. “Professors are changing the way they teach because of the technology. By assigning lectures outside of class, they have more time for classroom discussion, labs, and other forms of group work.”

New Use Cases

With the rapid growth of Creighton’s BlueCast system in popularity and adoption, Saltzman and his DoIT colleagues have begun encouraging more expansive use cases of the Panopto software.

The first extensive non-lecture use of Panopto began early in Creighton’s deployment. The School of Medicine began recording practice doctor/patient consultations from 10 “small group rooms” which were already outfitted with cameras and mics.

“They had already been recording these sessions with Windows Movie Maker,” recalls Murch-Shafer. “They switched to Panopto right away and loved it. It’s a much easier process for them now. They simply input the students name and push record. The recordings are uploaded to the LMS automatically upon completion, and the instructors are free to review the sessions at later time.”

A variety of groups on campus are beginning to use Panopto to create distance learning programs and to broadcast academic events as well. In 2011, Saltzman used Panopto to broadcast Creighton’s Presidential Convocation. “Broadcasting this event used to be a difficult thing to do,” says Saltzman. “But with Panopto, I was able to trim the beginning and ending of the recording in the Panopto editor, and distribute the link within an hour. This capability is becoming a real plus for us.”

Next up: Creighton live streams “Match Day” ceremony with Panopto