{"id":3917,"date":"2023-02-21T12:45:55","date_gmt":"2023-02-21T12:45:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thinking.is.ed.ac.uk\/melissa\/?p=3917"},"modified":"2023-04-05T09:07:21","modified_gmt":"2023-04-05T09:07:21","slug":"focus-on-media","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thinking.is.ed.ac.uk\/melissa\/2023\/02\/21\/focus-on-media\/","title":{"rendered":"making media accessible for teaching and learning"},"content":{"rendered":"
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This is the cover of my book about designing learning.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

At University of Edinburgh we centrally support and manage two large media services, Media Hopper Create and Media Hopper Replay.\u00a0 Both Media Hoppers are named for Grace Hopper<\/a>. <\/span><\/p>\n

Media Hopper Create is our media asset management service (for long term storage and streaming of media) and Media Hopper Replay is our lecture recording service.\u00a0 Both services are integrated into the VLE and core to the University\u2019s teaching and learning.\u00a0 Media Hopper Create\u2019s usage sky rocketed during COVID and although there has been some reduction since the pandemic ended, usage is still very high compared to pre-pandemic.\u00a0 Media Hopper Replay was used less during the pandemic but was used more for live streaming and for automatically pushing Zoom recordings. Now teaching is back\u00a0 on campus, usage has gradually increased to pre-pandemic levels.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Media Hopper Create is provided by\u00a0 Kaltura and Media Hopper Replay is provided\u00a0 Echo360.\u00a0 These 2 edtech partners have been with us since 2015 and 2017 respectively.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The scale of use of media in learning and teaching at Edinburgh is significant. In January this year 2,301 new media items were created in <\/span>Media Hopper Create<\/span><\/b> by 605 staff and students.\u00a0<\/span>3,792 lectures captured in <\/span>Media Hopper Replay<\/span><\/b> in January, of which 235 were live streamed. This is an increase of approx. 1,000 from January 2022.<\/span> Even allowing for some duplication as colleagues move content from one platform to another , that still amounts to around 5,000 new items added to our ‘born digital\u2019 \u202fmedia collections.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

As a university, it\u2019s clearly important that we have the tools we need to support teaching and learning.\u00a0 Du<\/span>ring the last few <\/span>years<\/span> we\u2019ve seen <\/span>a change<\/span> in the way teaching and assessment is being done at the University and with the development of the Curriculum Transformation project, the landscape will further change.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>Given the advances in technology over the past few years and the developments with the Curriculum Transformation project, we should complete a detailed analysis in order to inform strategy for the future.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

A recent HEPI report<\/a> highlights that lecture recordings are the most in-demand digital resources for students and that ‘Recordings should be uploaded for the duration of the course and the resource could improve accessibility for part-time students, students with caring responsibilities, and students who are otherwise unable to attend lectures in-person. Videos should be uploaded onto a single, user-friendly platform’.<\/p>\n

Our media platforms integrate with our VLE and we have been looking at the accessibility of those materials for students.<\/p>\n

During the summer of 2022, 597 pre-selected courses <\/strong>from 19 Schools and Deaneries<\/strong> across the University of Edinburgh were reviewed against a defined selection of accessibility criteria.\u00a0 From the materials available, the review surveyed a selection of course materials published directly into Learn VLE , along with materials uploaded, URLs, images, and audio files. This review provides an overview of course accessibility by analysing a random selection of materials located within the courses.\u00a0Over 7600 documents\/URLs\/audio\/image files were reviewed overall.<\/strong><\/p>\n