The Digital Technologies Unit at Lancaster University began piloting Panopto’s lecture capture and video management solution in 2012. Their initial plan was to focus on rolling Panopto out at one of their Faculties as a pilot and to use the system to allow students to review lectures they had attended on-demand – something that both students and lecturers had been requesting. However, when one of their academics asked them for a short-term technical fix to allow him to deliver his oversubscribed lecture series to all the students who had signed up, they discovered that Panopto was also agile enough to help the University fulfil student demand in ways they hadn’t anticipated. Panopto is the easiest way to bring video to your school. Whether it's lecture capture, flipped classrooms, student video or anything else, Panopto makes video easy. Panopto makes it easy to record, share, and search video–in a single solution that requires zero new hardware and zero specialized training. Panopto’s video content management system automatically standardizes almost any video camera, then automatically encodes and uploads to a secure, searchable “Enterprise YouTube” of video content that can be shared internally or with partners and customers. For more, visit www.Panopto.com or call 855.PANOPTO today.

1. Beyond lecture capture:
Panopto transforms
how students learn and
communicate
USING PANOPTO TO
LIVE BROADCAST LECTURES
AT LANCASTER UNIVERSITY
ABOUT | Now approaching its
50th year, Lancaster University is a
The Digital Technologies Unit at Lancaster University began piloting Panopto’s
world-class centre for teaching and
lecture capture and video management solution in 2012. Their initial plan was
research located in the North West
to focus on rolling Panopto out at one of their Faculties as a pilot and to use
of England. The University places
the system to allow students to review lectures they had attended on-demand –
great emphasis on a strong student
something that both students and lecturers had been requesting. However, when
experience and employability and
one of their academics asked them for a short-term technical fix to allow him to
gives students access to academics
deliver his oversubscribed lecture series to all the students who had signed up,
who are experts in their field.
they discovered that Panopto was also agile enough to help the University fulfil
Lancaster’s community extends far
student demand in ways they hadn’t anticipated.
beyond the campus with research,
A SNAPSHOT OF THE CHALLENGE
October 2012: a new university term is about to start. An academic discovers
that one of his classes has struck a chord with students and is proving incredibly
popular. The only problem is that the room booked for this class can only hold
teaching and student exchange
partnerships with leading universities
and institutions in 24 countries globally.
TOTAL ENROLMENT | 12,525
WEBSITE | www.lancaster.ac.uk
300 students and 350 want to sign up. While the university arranges a bigger
room to accommodate all of the students, the question is, how can they make
sure the extra 50 students can access the same lecture content as those in
the main lecture theatre?
An obvious solution is to set up a temporary overflow class. But as the class is due
to run 2 - 3 times a week, having to set up a link with manual equipment multiple
times a week will involve several members of staff and the team does not have
this resource to spare. The question for the Digital Technologies Team is: can they
find a way to make the temporary overflow class work so that all of their students
are happy without placing an untenable burden on their staff?
With the term about to start, David Neal, Digital Technologies Engineer suggests
trying Panopto’s live broadcasting functionality as their fix while they make
longer-term arrangements.
Everyone involved
with the pilot of
Panopto was pleased
with its flexibility
and reliability.
— David Neal,
Digital Technologies Engineer

2. Beyond lecture capture:
Panopto transforms
how students learn and
communicate
THE PANOPTO SOLUTION
Reflecting on what happened next, David Neal comments: “We needed a quick
and easy way to connect students with the lecturers’ content while we worked
on a longer-term plan and Panopto seemed to offer us the best way forward.
Obviously, as we hadn’t originally intended to use Panopto for live event
broadcasting, we were curious to see whether it would deliver what we needed.
“What we found was that it was incredibly easy to use – I just opened up
the Panopto Recorder as usual and ticked the box that said ‘broadcast and
record’. This auto-generated a URL which we could then simply pull up in the
overflow room to let the students there see essentially all the same things as
those in the main lecture room – video of the lecturer, audio, his powerpoint
slides; everything.
“With the Panopto solution, we only needed one member of the team to make
With just a couple
of clicks, lecturers
can share their
content with
whatever groups
they want to reach.
This is a big relief
for our academics...
it means they retain
control over their
course material.
sure the URL was playing in the overflow venue (and to tick the box!), it really
— David Neal,
Digital Technologies Engineer
took no time at all.”
FUTURE PLANS WITH PANOPTO
Following the success of live broadcasting, David Neal’s team plans to roll out
Panopto across the whole university, primarily for its original intended purpose
as a lecture capture tool. The new challenge will be doing this at a pace
lecturers can absorb, ensuring they feel comfortable with the technology.
The Digital Technologies Team believes that Panopto’s remote recorder
will play a key role here – allowing them to schedule lecture capture centrally
PANOPTO AT
LANCASTER UNIVERSITY –
THE STORY IN NUMBERS
1 member of staff to initiate each
live broadcast
350 satisfied students attending an
and removing the burden from academics entirely.
The fact that recordings go to a private folder that only lecturers have access
to before they are made public through the Virtual Learning Environment (VLE)
will also help the adoption process, reassuring lecturers that they can review
their content before students can.
The university also wants to trial different set-ups, for instance by using a
camera with an operator in conjunction with Panopto to achieve different
effects with the solution.
oversubscribed course thanks to Panopto
750 lectures recorded so far
12,525 students at the university
who will benefit from the campus-wide
roll-out of Panopto
24,000 views of Panopto
recordings since October 2012
Interested? Visit us online at www.panopto.com, or contact us directly for a free trial:
+44 (0)20 3137 5955 | uk@panopto.com
@Panopto
linkedin.com/company/panopto