Internet2 NET+ Video, Voice, and Collaboration: Portfolio Update and Success Stories:

Fuze Meeting at SLU

Kyle Collins Director – Academic Technologies

•  Jesuit university founded in 1818

•  “Higher Purpose. Greater Good.”

•  Oldest university west of the Mississippi River

•  Main campus – St. Louis, MO

•  Second campus – Madrid, Spain

•  7800 undergraduate students

•  4900 graduate students (including Medical and Law)

•  First forward pass in football

•  “Oddest” Mascot: Billiken

About Saint Louis University (SLU)

Before Fuze Meeting…

•  Prior to 2012, SLU had:

•  24 video endpoints (Polycom and LifeSize)

•  “Stated” goal was to have at least one video endpoint in every building on campus

•  Wimba Classroom (virtual classroom tool) – academic use

•  Low usage of both tools

Moving towards Fuze Meeting

•  In 2011, SLU implemented Tegrity as a lecture capture solution

•  Investment in mics, web cams, and PCs in classrooms

•  In 2012, SLU had to select a replacement for Wimba Classroom

•  Engaged stakeholders (faculty, staff, and students) to determine user needs/required features

•  Questioned current video conferencing strategy

•  Took a wider look at tools for a web conferencing solution

•  Selected Fuze Meeting as the best tool to meet our needs

Where are we now?

•  Began implementation (pilot) with 100 licenses

•  Expanded to 220 licenses after one semester

•  Expanded to Enterprise Wide license after less than 1 year

•  SLU sponsored Fuze Meeting as a I2 Net+ cloud service

•  All faculty, staff, and students have access

•  Over 2,000 users have activated their license

•  161 classrooms and 9 event spaces are Fuze ready

•  Basic testing with video enpoints

Some stats…

•  Total activated users: 2,029

•  Total meetings (>1 user + > 5 minutes)

•  2013 Q3: 753

•  2013 Q4: 818 (+9%)

Success Stories

Fuze Meeting @ SLU"

Success Stories

“Fuze enabled my students in Saint Louis to connect with peers in Stockholm, Sweden for several weeks throughout my course. Through the Fuze platform, the two student groups had synchronous discussions of common topics and gained firsthand exposure to how professional development in occupational therapy occurs in different parts of the world.”

Beccy Aldrich, Ph.D., OTR/L, Assistant Professor, Department of Occupational Science and Occupational Therapy

Success Stories “I started using Fuze primarily as a webinar software during the blended (on-ground) sessions of our primarily online courses, along with recording the webinars for later viewing using Tegrity (because the recording functionality of Fuze Meeting was unreliable, initially). These webinars became so popular that students stopped coming to class because they could participate from their remote location (home/office) just as well as coming to class (there were some communication issues initially due to learning how use mic, turning it off when not in use to avoid feedback, etc.). Then, after the recording functionality became more stable, I started using Fuze for recording my weekly lectures and software/programming demos, too, not just webinars. I used to use Tegrity for this previously, but sharing those videos caused more trouble (plugin-related issues) to the students, than sharing the URL of flash-based videos hosted on Fuze. Right now, Fuze is the one-stop solution both for pre-recorded lectures as well as live webinars that can also be recorded for later viewing. And I re-use the same meeting each week, rather than creating one new meeting per week - this means I only have to share one URL for each week's meeting. This works well alongside posting the unique URL of each recording to a weekly lecture materials folder on Blackboard.”

Srikanth Mudigonda, Ph.D., Director of Grad. Program in Applied Analytics/Asst. Professor, School for Professional Studies

Success Stories

“This innovative classroom maintains the culture and climate of a dynamic classroom regardless of students’ venue. Students are free to speak spontaneously because they are unencumbered with traditional approaches in technology, such as pushing buttons to raise their hands or speak. Seminar discussion is liberated from the stilted and cumbersome interaction of asynchronous learning; social/informal interaction occurs naturally – so important in establishing collegiality and building mentoring relationships.”

Andrew C. Mills, PhD, RN, Director, PhD Nursing Program

Challenges

•  Deciding we needed a better tool

•  Understanding the difference (Tegrity vs. Fuze)

•  Lack of individual planning

•  Support – user confidence

•  Hardware “choices”

•  Shooting ourselves in the foot

Questions?

Contact Information

Kyle Collins Director – Academic Technologies Information Technology Services kcolli24@slu.edu

Thank you!