News

Utrecht U Launches Lecture Capture Initiative using Sonic Foundry Platform

• By Dian Schaffhauser
• 02/13/09

Utrecht University in The Netherlands has chosen Mediasite from Sonic Foundry to do lecture capture as a key component of its long-range online learning plan. The university rolled out its centralized course capture plan under the name LectureNet this semester. Academic departments including the humanities, arts, law, social studies, and the affiliated academic hospital pay a set price per lecture or course to have trained multimedia department staff record their classes.

"The use of lecture capture is growing like wildfire on our campus. Some departments are considering recording all of their lectures," said Lex Hermans, multimedia department consultant. "Teachers who have used LectureNet a few times are really thinking about how they can use it in different ways. If you imagine everything you teach is online and available via Mediasite, you can do more with personal group meetings. I see tremendous opportunity to develop this." The university is planning to record over 1,000 presentations in 2009.

After a year of piloting various webcasting applications, the university selected Mediasite, which it purchased through European reseller Mediamission. "In the long term, when we're recording thousands of lectures in a year, we'll need what Mediasite offers," said Hermans.

The Mediasite technology is also in use in Delft University of Technology, also based in The Netherlands.