The promise of video

I’ll be speaking at

Kaltura Connect Education Track 2023 – EMEA | Kaltura 28th November, London

I will speak about ‘The Promise of Video’

What do we expect from our media platforms? What do our students and users expect? How can we ensure that the promise of a generation of video is realised?

During academic year 22/23, we saw the highest rate of lecture recording ever seen at the University of Edinburgh.  Between Media Hopper Replay (lecture recording) and Media Hopper Create (media streaming and management) we saw more than 2000 days of media created last academic year, that’s nearly 5 ½ years of media.

I will look back at the last 10 years of my experience championing  media asset management in very ancient higher education institutions. Reflecting on the things which didn’t work the way we expected; the things which did work and spread like wildfire, and the things which continue to delight and surprise me for the future.

I chose my title because I was thinking about an incident at the start of term this year. Every year I have my fingers crossed that the start of term will go well, without any major incidents or business continuity challenges.

But it never does. This year it was RAAC

Suddenly we lost 6 of our biggest lecture theatres and teaching had to be relocated, fast.

To get venues with large enough rooms for this kind of teaching we were going to have to go off campus into city theatres and conference centres.   And even though we didn’t own, manage or run those venues, they all had to have lecture recording in place, for all lectures, because the students had been promised video.

The promise of video at University of Edinburgh is a key part of our offer- of our student experience. More than 450 lecture theatres are kitted out and more than 98% of all undergraduate lectures are recorded, turned around within 24 hours and available for students in the VLE.

Video has gone from being a WOW factor to being  a hygiene factor in only a few years.