Florida college finds a single video platform that can do it all

Seminole State engages with Panopto to record, stream and share video for several hundred faculty and 30,000 students

Over the past decade, the eLearning team at Seminole State College of Florida saw video organically grow to become a regular part of students’ learning experiences. But as different instructors and departments were starting to adopt the technology, there was a lack of standardization, which quickly began to create a number of new challenges when it came to recording, streaming and sharing video across campus.

The school tried and tested a range of video solutions, but no single solution met every need. Storage, editing, sharing, and analytics in particular, had all proven to be difficult issues.

Hoping to better serve the needs of several hundred faculty and more than 30,000 students, Seminole State turned to Panopto. 

Panopto’s all-in-one video platform was designed specifically for higher education. It provided the school with a single solution for livestreaming lectures and events; flexible recording both in and out of the classroom, for flipped classrooms, student presentations, faculty training, and more; centralized video storage; efficient streaming across the university network; and simple integration with the school’s learning management system.

A memorable event 

Seminole State’s music department is one of the school’s best connections to its community. It is an important part of how the college interacts with students, alumni, donors and others. To further build that connection, the department set a goal: to livestream every department concert so that anyone could watch.

Panopto was a natural choice for the task. With Panopto, schools can livestream video from any Windows or Mac laptop, simply by selecting a single checkbox. Live video is streamed online using the architecture of the internet, and any live-stream can be shared either with a restricted set of viewers or broadcast to a public audience of tens of thousands. And for every livestream, Panopto automatically takes care of the back end production to ensure optimal playback for every viewer. 

Seminole State was still only testing Panopto, and had only limited experience with the platform when the school decided to livestream the music department’s first show. The result, however, was a complete success—well-received by the community, and streamed without any difficulties.

Growing demand

Following the success of the music department’s webcast, demand for Panopto grew all across campus. For Seminole State, Panopto’s value was not only in what it could record, but how easy the platform was to use. For the eLearning team, that started with Panopto’s Remote Recorder, which enables administrators to schedule recordings in advance from their laptop or smartphone.

“From the beginning, we fell in love with the Remote Recorder,” says Michael McCurdy, instructional technology specialist at Seminole State. “It really reduced the workload for the media services department. Now we just program in the classes and Panopto handles recording, streaming and uploading for us, automatically. We don’t have to worry about a thing.”

Panopto’s integration with the school’s learning management system, Canvas, made it easy for instructors and students to share and watch the recordings. That ease of use, in turn, encouraged more faculty members to experiment with new uses for video in their classrooms.

“Our professors all had different needs when it came to video, and Panopto gave us an answer for all of them,” says McCurdy. “Now if they want they can create and edit recordings, schedule when videos will and won’t be available to students, and even record other materials like lab demonstrations or flipped classroom lectures.”

For more information, visit www.panopto.com

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