Wilmington University Educational Technology: The Bleeding Edge on a Budget
Over 8,000 students take their degree program at Wilmington University entirely online. With such a large online presence our focus on educational technology and online learning must always be at the forefront of our student experience, and as an institution focused on affordability, budget-conscious options are always a high priority. By creating a balance between user-focused technology and budget friendly options, we’re able to create the ideal remote experience for our students and faculty.
At the start of 2019, we began the implementation and transition to Instructure Canvas as our Learning Management System (LMS) after 18 years as Blackboard customers. In less than a year, we had transitioned thousands of faculty, students, and courses onto several new technology platforms including Canvas, Zoom, and TurnItIn. We also continued our existing relationships with video and multimedia tools like Kaltura and VoiceThread, transitioning those integrations from Blackboard to Canvas. We launched university-wide with Canvas for the Fall 2019 semester with amazing adoption success, and this change to a more student-centric technology experience would prove to be fortuitous considering the COVID-19 crisis looming on the horizon.
A significant focus of our online educational initiatives is making our courses more dynamic and engaging in the online environment. Focusing on tools like Kaltura, Zoom, and VoiceThread has provided both synchronous and asynchronous video and multimedia experiences for our faculty and students. Kaltura is deeply integrated in all Canvas courses for asynchronous video communication. The Kaltura suite of tools allows for students and faculty to engage in creation of multimedia objects from their own devices and participate in course content like video discussion boards and assignments. Some of our nursing courses use video health assessment demonstrations as final projects for students in healthcare and nursing programs, something that wouldn’t have been possible for students at a distance just a few years ago.
At Wilmington University, we had a huge online presence even before the COVID-19 crisis. Our affordable, open-access commuter model coupled with our online ideology of learning anywhere “on your time” saw over 70% of our students taking courses online before the crisis began. Now many of our online tools and platforms are seeing even further increased use, but the largest impact has been to our video conferencing tool, Zoom. Much like the rest of the world, Zoom has become our go-to for synchronous video communication. In March of 2020, we were forced to move all faculty, staff, and students to the online environment due to the COVID-19 crisis. We saw a 300% increase in Zoom meetings immediately in March as compared to the prior months, and that has steadily increased throughout the rest of the spring and summer of 2020.
Beyond academic instruction, Zoom has become a virtual conference room for staff meetings, a webinar experience for faculty training, and an online auditorium and town hall for everything from Faculty Senate to awards presentations. These types of events are taking place 100% virtually during the COVID crisis, but previously we used our video platforms like Zoom and Kaltura to provide hybrid experiences, bringing face-to-face events to the virtual audience. For large events like commencement, we employ a “one-way” live streaming model using an RTMP encoder and mobile broadcast video production equipment. We recently upgraded to a 4K ready workflow, utilizing affordable gear from Teradek, Blackmagic, Panasonic, Atomos, and Decimator. One of the most important changes in recent years to budget-minded video production is the availability of “prosumer” equipment from trusted professional broadcast technology brands. By taking advantage of affordable gear like Panasonic CX350 cameras, the Blackmagic TV Studio 4K switcher, the Teradek VidiU Go live encoder, the Atomos Shogun Inferno and Ninja V solid-state recorders, and a handful of Decimator cross-converters, we are able to create a fully 4K capable mobile production experience using a primarily SDI workflow. We debuted our new, upgraded mobile production capabilities at our most recent commencement event in January 2020, running simultaneous shows alongside our existing 1080 production workflow, with different academic colleges running simultaneous ceremonies in different locations. Our existing 1080 mobile production workflow is building around a Datavideo SE-1200mu switcher, but much of the rest of the setup is quite similar to the newer 4k-ready production. We will continue to take advantage of our upgraded equipment and workflow once large gatherings are permitted again for events like commencement and other large-scale productions. The advantage of these new, affordable options is that professional broadcast quality is available to even the most budget-conscious institutions.
These same cameras, tripods, field monitors, and more are also used daily in academic productions, further stretching our equipment dollar. Everything from guest speakers to on-location academic content is produced using the same equipment used for large-scale productions. This academic ideo content is loaded into Canvas courses via the Kaltura LTI integration to make the courses as dynamic and engaging as possible. Faculty are able to request video productions from the Multimedia team, and we make every effort to provide the right level of complexity for every project. Video-to-USB adapters can be added to these productions as well, with both HDMI and SDI to USB3 options available to turn any video production, on campus or remote, into a fully interactive web video experience. Offerings from Epiphan, Magewell, and Blackmagic are available to take any traditional video signal and provided it via USB to web conferencing platforms like Zoom.
We use a similar workflow in our video-enabled classrooms, which allow us to bring SDI and HDMI cameras easily into both Kaltura for lecture capture and Zoom for live web conferencing. This hardware-only approach is platform agnostic, and combines affordable cameras with USB boundary microphones and interactive projectors (like offerings from SMART and Epson) to turn any physical space into a flexible, video-enabled classroom. This modular approach has allowed us to combine remote students with the face-to-face environment at a fraction of the cost of turnkey solutions. The same SDI and HDMI devices we use for remote productions are installed into classroom podiums and combined with affordable boundary mics to provide video and audio to the software platforms in the expected USB format. This allows full interaction between face-to-face students and instructors along with students at a distance, and the same hardware can be used with Kaltura capture for quick and easy ad-hoc lecture recordings.
What all of these technologies and strategies have in common is flexibility and affordability. TV Chef Alton Brown famously hates any device that’s a uni-tasker. He often admonishes the use of single-task kitchen gadgets, calling them a waste of money, and suggests thinking outside the box to find devices that can accomplish multiple tasks for the same price. We try to employ the same line of thinking when selecting video and multimedia hardware and software. Before any purchase, large or small, we consider the use-cases and longevity of the product: How long will this technology be viable? Is it modular? Is it useful for more than one product? Will support be available in a year? In 5 years? In 10? These are all questions that can help you stretch your dollar to limits you may not have thought possible while still outputting a compelling and engaging product.
Meet the Author, Russ Lichterman
Russ Lichterman studied film and television at Temple University earning a BA in Film and Media Arts. Russ also holds a master's degree in Applied Educational Technology from Wilmington University. Russ spent over thirteen years working in television for Comcast and NBCUniversal before moving to higher education. Russ is currently the Director of Educational Technology and Multimedia at Wilmington University and regularly presents on Educational Technology and Multimedia topics at industry conferences related to higher education and technology.