OneSchool Global
Achievements
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Seamless integration with the Canvas LMS
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Cross-campus collaboration with teachers around the world
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Video analytics enhancing pedagogical practices
The Challenge
Perennially on the cutting edge of education technology, OneSchool Global (OSG) moved to a virtual learning model in 2012. As the school grew from 60 students on a single campus in Sydney, Australia, to a geographically dispersed school with many campuses, it increasingly relied on technology to help teach and learn remotely.
According to Thomas Frizelle, OSG’s Global Chief Information and Digital Learning Officer, the school evolved from a distance learning modality to a cloud-based digital ecosystem that enables all students, regardless of location, to access the same high-quality resources through online learning.
“Over the last seven years we have been on a journey to find technology to help move a lot of our teaching and learning online,” Frizelle says. “Many of our campuses are relatively small and so we leverage the scale of being a global school to allow for education to happen across the smaller campuses by using teachers at different locations.”
OSG had a clear understanding of what it wanted to achieve in a virtual classroom, but it needed to figure out the right combination of technologies to bring that vision to fruition. Leaders were looking for a set of solutions that would not only enable live-streamed classes, but also help teachers record classes, share the videos, and organize these digital assets. OSG also wanted to be able to create shorter videos (2-5 minutes) that students could access on their own.
“We had to look very closely at pedagogical approaches that support self-direction. On-demand content and flipped learning are central to what we do with our students and staff,” Carolyn Rhodes, the Teacher Academy Director at OSG says.
OSG also sought technologies that would help facilitate professional development. Since OSG’s pedagogical framework is central to its learning and teaching program, training new teachers on the framework and its influence on teaching and learning was critical. Teachers needed to be able to watch and self-critique the lessons they recorded, creating opportunities for peer mentoring across campuses.
“We wanted to be able to show new teachers great examples of how a lesson looks on Zoom and how to integrate with Canvas,” says Jeff Lloyd, Global Manager of Digital Learning at OSG.
When OSG began researching video management systems, it was looking for software that could easily integrate with its learning management system, Canvas, across geographies. Additionally, the solution had to be able to create and publish content outside of Canvas. Frizelle also stressed the need for single sign on. “We wanted all the tools to be cloud-based and to talk and work nicely together to allow for things like single sign on.”
The Solution
After evaluating many different solutions, OSG chose Panopto due to its seamless integrations with both Zoom and Canvas and its ability to act as a centralized, secure video library, thereby meeting the widest range of teaching needs. OSG integrated its five geographic Zoom subaccounts and the corresponding Canvas sub-accounts into one central Panopto hub that could communicate across all the campuses.
The combination of Panopto and Zoom enables global collaboration and a seamless live and on-demand video experience for students and teachers alike. Teachers can record while they are teaching a live class and then either edit or share it immediately across all of OSG’s campuses. If teachers would like to include quizzes, engagement tools, or other media content, they can easily do so and share the final recording through Panopto. Teachers can also create flipped content by recording themselves with Zoom and then editing their recordings with Panopto. The only equipment necessary to accomplish this? Their computers.
With the Panopto-Canvas integration, teachers can pull content out of Panopto and share it with any Canvas page, discussion, or assignment. “It’s really a lovely integration – it simply pulls in the embed code and streams straight from Panopto,” says Jeff Lloyd.
Canvas authenticates users through Microsoft and the Panopto-Canvas integration means that users don’t need to sign in again when they access Panopto. This single sign-on helps make the virtual learning experience even easier for teachers and students.
Panopto also gives teachers and school administrators valuable data to help improve their teaching. “Panopto gives us some brilliant analytics,” Jeff Lloyd says. “We can see how many times a video is played, where it’s played, and when people drop off. This visibility wouldn’t be possible with another external product. With Panopto we also have control on sharing permissions of these videos which allows us further control over the content.”
The Impact
Through the integration of Panopto, Zoom, and Canvas, OSG has delivered on its promise to empower teachers and support self-directed learners.
According to Rhodes, one of the great and unexpected outcomes of this virtual model with Panopto at its core is that teachers, regardless of location, can work together to develop learning materials.
“We’re increasingly having our faculties get together in teams and build out learning content collaboratively. This really helps with specialization around particular subject areas or components of subjects.”
The combination of Panopto and Zoom has also simplified asset management for all stakeholders. With Panopto, administrators can save and record meetings and use the search function in Panopto to easily find them. Panopto’s captioning feature also makes it easy to see exactly who said what during a meeting, which is especially helpful if someone misses a meeting and needs to watch the recording later. Teacher onboarding, which, prior to the pandemic, was all done in person, is now delivered through Panopto.