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Mediasite Administrators Update, May 2014(Archive)

As part of an ongoing effort to keep Mediasite administrators on campus informed, we created this DELTAwire article specifically for you!  For help with any Mediasite questions, please contact us at mediasite-help@ncsu.edu.

This article includes information on the following topics:

Major Mediasite Server Maintenance

From 7:00 a.m. – 6:00 p.m., on Monday, May 12, 2014, DELTA will be finalizing the move of Mediasite production instances from their current location in the campus data centers to our hardware at MCNC. Mediasite service will be down at this time while the databases are backed up and restored into the new servers and the DNS entries are updated.

Besides this downtime, we anticipate no changes to Mediasite usage from this move. For further information, please see Major Mediasite Maintenance.

Mediasite Monthly Server Maintenance

The monthly Windows Updates for the Mediasite servers will be installed between 8:00-9:00 a.m., on Friday, May 16, 2014. The servers will be rebooted one at a time, but no outage is expected due to the redundant nature of the system. For further information, please see Mediasite Server Windows Updates.

Opt-in for Classroom Capture with Mediasite

This summer, DELTA and the Office of Information Technology (OIT) invite instructors to record their courses in ClassTech classrooms that have Mediasite classroom capture recording systems.

While class session recordings are not intended as a substitute for attending class, the ability to rewatch or listen to classroom lectures and discussions provides students a useful way of reviewing course material. Revisiting course material can help students increase their retention and learning, such as while studying for tests.

Instructors can link recorded lectures directly from their course Moodle site for easy student access.  Lectures are restricted to students enrolled in the section, but instructors can add additional sections if they desire. Presentation viewing data is also available via weekly or monthly reports that can track individual student usage and evaluate correlations between student learning outcomes and use of the online materials.

Currently, all Mediasite-equipped classrooms operated by ClassTech have audio- and note- recording capabilities (such as presentation platforms and document cameras), and many of the classrooms have cameras. To see if your assigned room is Mediasite-equipped, please review the list of DELTA’s Classroom Capture Rooms. (Note: Only rooms where the college/department is listed as OIT/ClassTech are participating in this service.)

Instructors with moderate technical abilities tend to find operating Mediasite equipment for class recordings fairly simple. A brief equipment training session is provided, but the automated workflow makes recording your course reliable and user friendly. There is no charge for this service.

If you would like to record your course during the summer, please visit the Classroom Capture Portal to opt-in.

Desktop Recording and Media Management with My Mediasite

On May 19, My Mediasite will be made available for all NC State faculty and staff. My Mediasite is a service intended for all faculty and staff, not just current classroom content capture users.

Because we expect My Mediasite to have a significant impact on the university, we are deploying My Mediasite in phases and adding functions gradually. The first phase will employ the same opt-in process as the pilot, and each phase will build upon its predecessor, providing data for subsequent phases. This phasing allows us to isolate variables and establish benchmarks while adding users and functions to the service.

We are prioritizing certain functions, including the abilities to edit previously recorded classroom presentations, add new My Mediasite presentations to existing catalogs, and publish to specific Instances.

This upcoming phase will allow any faculty or staff member access to My Mediasite, but publishing will continue to be restricted to the My Mediasite Instance alone. This restriction is intended to isolate variables so we can track the impacts on our resources.

We ask for your patience and understanding as we build this service, one successful phase at a time.

NC State Mediasite User Group Meeting

The NC State Mediasite User Group (MUG) meeting has been rescheduled to 3:00-4:30 p.m., on June 5, 2014, in 130 Park Shops. We encourage everyone using Mediasite to attend. Please mark your calendars.

UNLEASH, Sonic Foundry’s Annual User Conference

Many individuals from NC State attended UNLEASH 2014 — the Annual Mediasite User Conference. Conference attendees were introduced to many new ideas for deploying Mediasite and My Mediasite, saw Sonic Foundry’s roadmap for Mediasite in the future, and had the opportunity to try out some of the latest developments and experience the new version 7 in action. Attendees also had many opportunities to talk with other Mediasite colleagues from around the world in peer group discussions, and with Sonic Foundry’s gurus, developers, engineers and management staff.

If you were unable to attend the conference, you can watch sessions on-demand by visiting the UNLEASH Showcase. We will be sending out an email to the Mediasite list-serv with the username and password to access the sessions.    

More Information

If you would like to learn more about Mediasite at NC State, or if you would like to see other topics covered in our next update, please contact Laura Stephenson at laura_stephenson@ncsu.edu. Your suggestions are always welcome.

Please send Mediasite help requests to mediasite-help@ncsu.edu.

Subscribe to Mediasite updates by sending the message “subscribe mediasite” to mj2@lists.ncsu.edu.