Bridging the Learning Divide with Smarter Classroom Recording

June 3, 2024

Last month, Panopto hosted an online webinar to explore how Middle Tennessee State University set about adapting and scaling its classroom technologies to support smarter classroom recording using Panopto and Epiphan, a valued partner providing hardware to our mutual customers.

Panopto collaborates with our valued customers this way to connect with our wider community and share how our video content management solution can address a variety of use cases, from smarter classroom recording via lecture capture to aiding students with accessibility requirements.

The main talking points were the barriers to technology adoption in higher education, scaling lecture capture, the benefits of smarter classroom recording, and the Panopto Epiphan integration. Want the full story? Click here to watch the webinar.

Here are three key takeaways:

Scalability cannot be understated.

At MTSU, the AV support team is a relatively lean staff of four people, including the Director of Classroom Technology, James Copeland. The university has over 400 teaching spaces, but most did not have lecture capture technology installed and the few rooms that were equipped relied on analogue technologies.

The COVID pandemic created an irreversible paradigm shift. MTSU had to integrate lecture capture throughout its 400+ rooms to maintain the high teaching standards students expected, but the technology also had to be easily monitored and maintained by MTSU’s lean AV team.

Julian Fernandez, Director of Product Marketing with Epiphan, worked with MTSU to integrate and centralize its AV solutions. “We’re increasingly seeing that universities want to standardize and centralize their setup. That’s one of the key requirements for scalability, as you can remotely monitor and control everything, like a TV studio. You have all these feeds, but you need that one hub to see what’s happening, and the dashboards make that not only possible but easy,” Fernandez observes.

MTSU now has over 400 and growing smarter teaching spaces, but Copeland and his team are now able to remotely monitor and control every classroom with ease. “We’re doing around 3500 streams a day, and our network had no problem with it. Panopto had no problem with it. Epiphan too. They were all able to scale up. With the dashboard, I can quickly see if there’s an issue with a device and either fix it remotely or send someone out to work on it. We’re fixing issues before anybody can even walk into the classroom,” comments Copeland.

“We’re increasingly seeing that universities want to standardize and centralize their setup. That’s one of the key requirements for scalability, as you can remotely monitor and control everything, like a TV studio. You have all these feeds, but you need that one hub to see what’s happening, and the dashboards make that not only possible but easy.”
Julian Fernandez, Director of Product Marketing, Epiphan

Technology should enhance learning, not obstruct it.

Copeland and the AV team at MTSU were able to intuitively grasp Panopto’s powerful, versatile platform and how it natively integrates with Epiphan’s hardware. However, the university also faced the perennial problems of ensuring faculty adoption and ease-of-use. Teachers shouldn’t have to learn the intricacies of new AV equipment to do their jobs, after all. Adding to this, Copeland remarks, “My CO had a very wise saying: if there’s a need for training, the majority are not going to do it.”

Copeland shares how he went about pursuing this goal of minimizing training, “I tried to create a system that didn’t require any training. We even use ceiling microphones so there’s nothing our faculty has to remember to do, like wearing microphones or pushing buttons. You simply walk in and start teaching, and you’re being recorded. I don’t know that it gets simpler than that.”

Student accessibility is a key benefit of smarter classroom recording.

MTSU sought to create a similarly unobtrusive experience for students to access high-quality video content without requiring additional steps.

The university took advantage of Panopto’s integrations to create a one-stop learning hub within its LMS. Copeland explains, “Our Epiphan Pearl Mini automatically uploads all videos to Panopto, and through Panopto’s integration with our LMS, students never have to access Panopto directly. They can go straight to the LMS and into their video folder to access all the recordings. It’s also where they can go to get links for livestreams.”

MTSU continues to innovate while taking advantage of Panopto’s intuitive and powerful toolset to address accessibility requirements and allow students to engage during class rather than worry about note taking. As Copeland observes, “Something that Panopto does that’s very valuable is auto-captioning, which meets our ADA needs. It also creates transcripts of everything, so students get automatic note taking too.”

Meet learner expectations and accessibility needs with Panopto.

Student success is critical to the health of any higher ed institution. Learn why more schools choose to partner with Panopto to improve learning outcomes – request a demo today.