Introducing Panopto

by Karl Luke

Capturing lectures, presentations and teaching content for learning

You may be aware of Cardiff University’s Learn Plus project, which has been promoted in this very blog, including the recent post Introducing Learn Plus (Panopto) and Blackboard Collaborate. As 2016 begins it is worth highlighting some of the practical affordances of the tool – Panopto – and communicate what the Learn Plus team have achieved so far and what is on the Horizon in the new year.

Introducing Panopto: What does it do?

Panopto is Cardiff University’s new event capture tool that enables staff to easily record lectures and make them available on-demand to our students. Panopto can also be used to live stream distance education courses, to record flipped classroom videos, and to record student assignments.

This technology allows for the simultaneous capture of audio, video and any computer application (including Microsoft PowerPoint) which can then be shared in a variety of ways during and/or after the session event.

Panopto enables academic staff to record teaching activities, in various settings and situations, and make them available to students through Learning Central.

For an overview Panopto and its possibilities please review this poster presenter.

The Journey So Far

The Learn Plus team have been busy since the start of the 2015/16 academic year engaging with Early Adopter Schools in gathering requirements, installing and configuring equipment, and evaluating the Panopto system. Staff and students within the early adopter Schools have reported very positive experiences with the tool and we hope to build on these experiences as we begin to rollout Panopto across the University in 2016.

What is on the horizon?

2016 is shaping up to be a very busy year for the Learn Plus team as we prepare to rollout and promote Panopto to staff and student communities. We will shortly be upgrading to Panopto version 5.0, for personal capture use, which brings with it enhanced features and improvements such as:

• Mac client support for multi-camera recording and live webcasting;
• Live pause and rewind during webcast feeds;
• Windows client re-design with the ability to record system audio.

For more information on what’s new in version 5.0 visit this blog post from Panopto.

A key Learn Plus milestone is the planned installation of event capture capabilities in a large number of teaching spaces across the University in the next few months and transitioning Panopto into a fully supported University service.

The Learn Plus team will continue to work closely with Cardiff University Students’ Union and the VP Education to manage student expectations, communicate project milestones and promote effective uses of Panopto to enhance student learning.

Want to get started?

If you would like to get involved and have a requirement for using Panopto please complete the short online form available on the Intranet.

We hope that this update gives you an idea of what’s going on in the background at the moment. If you have any questions that you would like to raise, please contact the team: LearnPlus@cardiff.ac.uk or get involve in the Learn Plus Yammer community.