CSUSM Professor Mary Jo Poole created a Mediasite presentation in which she walked students through her online sociology course syllabus, explaining each requirement. The number of student e-mail questions dropped dramatically. In an anonymous survey, one of her students said, "I enjoyed the connection and personal contact I felt with Mediasite. It made me feel like the course was more personalized."

"We are still in the early phases (of a wider campus-wide adoption of Mediasite)," says Linda Scott, interim director of Academic Technology at CSUSM. "It has certainly been a major transformation for the people who have started to use it, and it is spreading. They are sharing the power of it with their colleagues."

Building Learning Modules

One of the key findings to date is that Mediasite is a great tool for creating relatively small learning modules no longer than 15 minutes in length. Rather than capturing a long lecture, Scott is encouraging educators to craft rich media modules that are similar to learning objects that can be embedded in CSUSM’s learning management system. "They can build resources around it, like chat, or an assignment, and use it as an element of their instruction," she adds.

One Librarian’s Experience

This is the kind of activity that CSUSM Humanities Librarian Judith Downie has been working on. Downie has created at least 15 relatively short Mediasite presentations, ranging from 6 minutes to 16 minutes in length, each related to her work in library resource instruction and support and information literacy. "I am finding that presentations over 10 minutes are a little long for the viewer," she says.

Downie is a busy educator who frequently teaches what she refers to as "one-shot library resource instruction," to students in a wide variety of face-to-face courses at all levels. Some days she can be teaching as many as five 75-minute sessions. The demand for her in-class services keeps increasing; plus, CSUSM’s distance education program is starting to grow and require more online librarian support services for its students and faculty. To meet such demand, Downie has essentially cloned herself through her dedication to producing Mediasite presentations.

Downie’s most recent Mediasite production was a 15-minute presentation for graduate students who are teaching first-year writing courses at CSUSM, called General Education Writing (GEW). She says she created a presentation about how GEW faculty and librarians can work together to bring more resources to the students.

Downie says that producing all these rich media presentations has made her "more aware of the chunkiness, the modular elements in my instruction," which has spurred her on to eventually create an entire information literacy series of learning modules. This would allow students to view rich media presentations, with full audio, video and PowerPoint slides, that cover specific topics, such as how to use the library catalog, how to search an online database and access full text articles through a link resolver, or how to conduct research utilizing journal articles, etc. The modules would also be geared toward various levels of student information literacy knowledge and experience. "They will be more student centered," Downie says, referring to how a graduate student’s information literacy skills, for instance, are typically much more advanced than an undergraduate’s information literacy skills.

Problem-Free Implementation

Overall, Mediasite is widely used for online learning, sharing student presentations, capturing guest speakers and enhancing face-to-face instruction. It is also utilized for business support activities, providing on-demand training to all areas of the campus. "As far as setting it up, there were very few problems, " says Scott. "It is also very user friendly; we just create containers (for presenters) and they are set to go."

CSUSM purchased three Mediasite units, two that have been built into smart distance learning classrooms, and one portable unit that resides in a small studio and can also be easily transported to a classroom. One person basically handles the scheduling of all three units. The Academic Technology department built their own server to support the Mediasite system.

In May 2007 CSUSM was presented with an Excellence in Distance Education Award by Sonic Foundry at its first Mediasite users conference.