eStream Takes UEA Student Engagement to a Higher Level

University of East Anglia’s (UEA) drive is to help students to be brilliant. Its teaching and learning strategy embraces the possibilities of online and blended delivery models to create time and space for engaging, active lectures for students. Delivering this strategy involves increasing the use of media content within teaching and learning across the university as a whole, and the learning technology team was keen to ensure there was a system in place that could support this anticipated growth in media content creation and sharing.

Meeting specific requirements eStream ‘ticked every box’

With significant growth in online delivered content predicted in a number of areas, the UEA learning technology team wanted a robust and scalable central mechanism for delivering online content that would make it as easy as possible for the university’s academic teaching staff and students to create and share media content.

We needed a solution to meet our requirements for lecture capture, media streaming, digital signage, and video on demand. It had to be easy to use and able to fully integrate with our Blackboard VLE, with good live streaming capabilities. eStream ticked every box.

Head of Learning Technology
University of East Anglia

Key Project Objectives

  • NGrow flipped and blended learning
  • NMaximise the ability to deliver live broadcasts and TV and radio recordings
  • NSupport the delivery of the anticipated increase in student generated content
  • NIntegration with the university’s Blackboard Virtual Learning Environment

Supporting Online Learning

The university has developed online courses and used eStream to embed video content.

“We have embedded eStream in a British Heritage and Archaeology course for Japanese students at the University of Tokyo. This allowed students to work on course materials online, as well as providing text and viewing materials to support the course. Our academics found the system very straightforward to use, and it has allowed us to make this unique connection with the University of Tokyo with great ease.”

Head of Learing Technology
University fo East Anglia

Making Flipped Learning an Everyday Reality

eStream supports flipped learning by giving students bite-sized chunks of information to look at ahead of lectures. Students find the information easier to digest in this way, and also find it beneficial to be able to revisit the content as many times as they like, via whichever device they choose, to clarify and help embed learning.

“Creating video content is very easy. I tend to write a script, deliver it to autocue in our recording suite and then upload the videos. A good example is our anatomy and physiology lectures, where there is a lot of detail to get through. Ahead of a three-hour lecture, students are given the tailored video content to review in advance, in a setting of their choice. It gives them the flexibility to come back to the material and hone in on parts which they may be struggling to take in. We also find it very useful to be able to access relevant video content from other courses. The Medicine course, for example, has content that also applies to our Paramedicine students. Sharing content in this way is hugely beneficial to learning, but it also saves academics valuable preparation time by avoiding duplication of efforts.”

Lecturer in Paramedic Science
University fo East Anglia

The Future and Innovation at UEA

“Before using eStream, we were asking lecturers to think about different ways of teaching flipped content, but not providing them with an easy way of producing and streaming media. eStream gives them that capability, and there is a very positive feeling amongst the academics about the system. It is being widely used by teaching staff for video assessment; whereby they set video essays, students produce videos, and upload them to the VLE using the Blackboard mashup tool for viewing and feedback. “I very much see video assessment as a growth area at the university and I would really like for the markers to be able to give real time comments by embedding in-line comments and use that for feedback, which they will be able to do in future releases of eStream.” “eStream has certainly opened our eyes and we are learning all the time about new ways in which it can continue to support the evolution of our teaching and learning over the coming years.”

Head of Learing Technology
University fo East Anglia