Why

The ACTT recommended a fall 2016 Panopto Pilot, following the spring 2016 evaluation of streaming media and video asset management services. 10 Undergraduate and 8 MIIS courses used Panopto for video streaming. Students that also used Canvas in their courses could access video from Panopto, however they had to log in again. Some faculty at MIIS also used the webcasting feature successfully, including interactive discussion and note-taking features. Sharing videos via Canvas site embedding and through a link has resulted in a good user experience, however it currently requires separate logins to Canvas and Panopto platforms.

Panopto has indicated that it would add the following features to the video streaming service by December 17th:

• Quizzing — Instructors can add multiple choice, multi-select, and true/false questions into any video using the Panopto editor. Viewers can take quizzes in the interactive player, and instructors can access real-time reports of all responses.
• Captions — Users can access Panopto’s machine-generated speech-to-text captions and modify them in the video editor. In addition, users can customize the color, size, and position of captions during playback.
• Primary Video Switching — For multi-camera recordings, video creators can switch between primary video feeds using the Panopto editor.
• Enhanced Editing — Adding the ability to upload custom thumbnails, and to upload and manage slides within the video timeline.

A shortcode plugin for WordPress has been added to sites.middlebury.edu/sites.miis.edu. Currently it is not possible to add a Panopto video to Drupal, but other schools have solutions for embedding in Drupal that they are willing to share.

Feedback on Panopto has been generally good, and it has been useful for the classes that did use it. Departments are interested in the service that Panopto provides.

Recommendation Summary

The Academic Cyberinfrastructure Transformation Team recommends adding Panopto to the ITS fiscal year 2018 budget.

• Middlebury contracts a Panopto enterprise license for 3-5 years

• Middlebury encourages Panopto to provide better integration with Canvas

• This will enable the decommissioning of Middmedia, Muskrat, and other video streaming services in a separate project. This should be considered at the end of FY19.

Implementation Timeline

Most of this work has been accomplished during the Fall 2016 pilot of Panopto. There is some work being done by Panopto technical staff to provide better integration with Canvas, they have let us know it is scheduled to be completed by December 17, 2016.

Support

Outline of responsibilities

* Conversations are occurring to identify course-related and administrative department support for the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey.

Why

We investigated alternative web conferencing services for remote work, collaboration, and online learning. Our Adobe service provider will be discontinuing their education pricing for Adobe Connect licenses, doubling our costs.

A number of services were identified; some of them were also being investigated through the IT Unified Communications project. We first inventoried the features of each service and then identified the top three services to compare with Adobe Connect. 15 people from ACTT Core group and extended ACTT at Middlebury and Monterey groups compared the user experiences of the three services with Adobe Connect and each other.

Zoom was selected because it had the best user experience of the services identified after having tested it in all three categories named above: remote work, collaboration, and online learning. It had a good reputation amongst users and was being successfully implemented in a variety of mission-critical contexts: an online class, in an Envisioning Middlebury community initiated conversation attended by 30 people on the topic of distance collaboration and remote work, in a global virtual nonproliferation education forum coordinated from Monterey, and in a variety of other use cases. The enterprise license cost was also comparatively lower.

Integrated access to reliable, scalable, and flexible web conferencing for all Middlebury students, faculty and staff will be realized by adopting Zoom at the enterprise level (all Middlebury). The potential impact of this investment in shared resources include improved communications, outreach, and teaching innovation.

Recommendation Summary

The Academic Cyberinfrastructure Transformation Team recommends adding Zoom to the ITS fiscal year 2018 budget, replacing prior services.

• Middlebury contracts a Zoom enterprise license for one year

• Middlebury contracts with CirQ LTI to allow Zoom-based web conferencing for online and hybrid courses to be available through Canvas

Cost

Proposed FY 18 Zoom cost: $41,000 annually

Host licenses for all Middlebury users, 470 100 capacity meeting rooms and ten 500 capacity meeting rooms. In addition to offering a web conferencing solution, Zoom has the potential to phase out and replace existing video conferencing services, a significant savings for Middlebury over the next few years.

Comparative cost of Adobe Connect:

Actual FY 17 Adobe Connect Cost: $18,000

Proposed FY 18 Adobe Connect Cost: $36,000

• (discontinuing educational discount)
• 80 host licenses and 2 webinar rooms accommodating 500 users

Implementation Timeline

Most of this work has been accomplished during the Fall 2016 pilot of Zoom. Also, the pilot license will be extended during Spring 2017 to transition users from Adobe Connect to Zoom.

Support

Outline of responsibilities

* Conversations are occurring to identify course-related and administrative department support for the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey.