CASE STUDY:

Purdue Embraces Campus-Wide Vodcasting with Echo³⁶⁰

Purdue University, the acknowledged leader of campus-wide podcasting with their innovative BoilerCast service, chose to expand their campus lecture capture outreach by selecting the Echo³⁶⁰System to enhance podcasts. Purdue wanted to further enrich lecture podcasts with course visuals. “BoilerCast recordings are currently captured in 70 classrooms throughout campus,” said David Eisert, educational technologist at Purdue University. “We needed a single platform to expand availability of BoilerCast and provide a foundation for capturing and distributing broader varieties of content as Purdue supports learning anytime, anyplace for our 38,000 students.”

The Echo³⁶⁰System will upgrade the BoilerCast audio-only service to include rich media course visuals in the form of enhanced podcasts and vodcasts. The system’s automated publishing interface will enable lecture podcasts to be delivered to Purdue students through a wider variety of channels, including iTunesU and The Blackboard Learning System™ – Vista Enterprise License.

Enhanced podcasts and vodcasts put course materials into the hands of the students 24/7, regardless of location, allowing them to review and study lectures over and over again. To learn more about the Purdue initiative, click here.

EXECUTIVE MESSAGE:

The Year in Review

As you close out your semester and the year, the team at Echo³⁶⁰ would like to thank you for your continued support. We’ve had an extremely busy semester, as highlighted in this year’s final edition of Verbatim.

We announced in August that we had acquired Lectopia, a lecture capture pioneer born out of the University of Western Australia. Simultaneous to our acquisition, we announced the change of our name to Echo³⁶⁰, encapsulating the ability we provide students to rewind their lectures.

In October, the Echo³⁶⁰ brand debuted at Educause, in Seattle, Washington. Visitors were introduced to the Echo³⁶⁰System, our on-demand learning platform which combines rich media and ease of use to give students full and unbounded access to their classroom-based content through a variety of platforms. Using the Echo³⁶⁰System, colleges and universities can reliably create lecture echoes in all classrooms on campus. The Echo³⁶⁰System capture appliance has been in beta testing, along with the new version of the backend server, during the fall semester.

November brought the first Echo³⁶⁰Cast: Profiles in Lecture Capture web seminar, featuring Tracy Chapman, Executive Director of eLearning and Technology of Creighton University. Ms. Chapman addressed the successes and challenges of building a distance learning program using lecture capture for Creighton’s Doctor of Pharmacy degree program, the only program accredited by the American Council on Pharmacy Education. To view the archived version of the Echo³⁶⁰Cast, click here.

Later in the month, Echo³⁶⁰ had the distinguished honor of receiving the prestigious Carrick Program Award, presented for the Lectopia project in the ‘Programs that Enhance Learning’ in the ‘Services Supporting Student Learning’ category. You can read more about this distinct honor below.

We hope that this semester has been productive and inspiring to both you and your students. Enjoy the holidays, relax with family and friends, and refresh your minds before the start of the next semester.

We look forward to working with you towards a successful New Year!

Warmest regards,

Mark Jones
Senior Vice President and General Manager, Echo³⁶⁰

NEWS HIGHLIGHT:

Lectopia Project Receives Carrick Award

On November 27, 2007, Mike Fardon, Founder of Lectopia and VP Product Management, Echo³⁶⁰ and Jocasta Williams, Manager of Community Relations accepted the prestigious Carrick Program Award by the Carrick Institute for Learning and Teaching in Higher Education. The award was received in recognition of Lectopia’s support of student learning at the University of Western Australia, where the system captures more than 2,400 lectures per month. The Carrick Award recognizes exemplary programs and services making an outstanding contribution to the quality of higher education. These are granted to programs and services where impressive effectiveness has been demonstrated after strenuous evaluation. This year’s awards were presented at the Australian Federal Parliament House in Canberra.

The Lectopia project, which was recently acquired by Echo³⁶⁰ and re-introduced under the name Echo³⁶⁰, is a notable system for capturing and publishing university lectures for on-demand student replay. Lectopia has been widely acknowledged by lecturers and students both nationally and internationally as offering a valuable learning resource for students primarily for revision and concept review purposes, but also for students with work/family commitments, those with disabilities and/or medical conditions, to overcome timetabling clashes, and to assist students who are faced with language barriers. It is a pedagogically-driven tool specifically designed to support and enhance student learning from lectures, while also facilitating flexibility in the ability of students to access their learning materials. Such recordings are invaluable for students unable to attend live lectures, revision of classroom material, or needing repetition to build retention. In fact, Lectopia records over 3,000 lectures per week at 20 colleges and universities worldwide.

The Carrick Institute for Learning and Teaching in Higher Education (an Australian Federal Government sponsored entity) coordinates an annual awards program to reward individuals and programs in Australian higher education. The University of Western Australia (UWA) successfully nominated Lectopia for an award for ‘Programs that Enhance Learning’ in the ‘Services Supporting Student Learning’ category.