M+E Daily

Kaltura today announced that the University of the West of England (UWE), a customer for over three years, has expanded its use of Kaltura’s technology to over 500 courses this academic year. UWE, which has over 27,000 current students and over 3,000 staff, has embedded online video resources into its learning, teaching, and assessment activities – including integrating the Kaltura video platform into its VLE, Blackboard Learn. This academic year students can, for the first time, produce their own video on a mobile device, easily embed it into an assessment, and then securely submit the assessment to the lecturer via the VLE, removing the need for complicated uploads, formatting and transfer of large files.

The secure, flexible end-to-end Kaltura video platform is facilitating a number of further innovations in terms of teaching and assessment practices. The Faculty of Health and Applied Sciences, which boasts over 7,000 students, is particularly innovative in its use of video as a way to combine theoretical work with the professional development of students’ practical skills.

UWE has registered more than 30,000 video playbacks in the first three months of this academic year and an average of over six minutes of viewing time per playback. This represents a significant increase in the use of the Kaltura platform over the whole of last year, when video playbacks totaled 79,000. Since the beginning of the program in the academic year 2013/14, more than 12,500 media files have been uploaded and viewed. All of the university’s staff and students have their own media store on Kaltura, which they can access via mobile devices and computers.

Some areas of study of particular note are:

Music Therapy: Using video as a reflective tool for students training to become therapists. Students record their practice whilst on specialist clinical placements and submit that securely as evidence of the competencies they are acquiring.

Physiotherapy: Using video as a modelling tool to scaffold the professional development of students. Videos of different techniques are captured on tablet devices during demonstrator sessions on campus and then are annotated, analyzed and shared with students.

Nursing: Using video for assessment and improvement. Students record themselves completing a role-play task and submit those videos for assessment together with a critical analysis of their performance and how it relates to theory.

In the social sciences, the politics and international relations department is using video as a professional practice environment and assessment tool to help students develop conferencing and remote working skills.

“The Kaltura platform is an elegant solution that fosters engagement,” says Manuel Frutos-Perez, Director of Learning Enhancement at the University of the West of England. “We have been thrilled with the growing level of video adoption we’ve seen across the university. Both students and faculty find the Kaltura video tools beneficial, helping them to achieve their goals more quickly, and being really easy to use.” “Video is a powerful tool for learning and assessment,” says Kaltura co-founder, Chairman and CEO Ron Yekutiel. “That’s why we built a flexible platform with engaging video tools for personal media capture and interactive video quizzing. We’re thrilled to see the success in adoption and creative uses that the University of the West England has enjoyed, and we look forward to continuing to support their innovation.”