cielo24 Media TechTalk Podcast, Episode 001

Title: Video Learning Fall 2020

Date: October 27, 2020

>> Hello and welcome. You're listening to Media Tech Talk, an ongoing conversation about innovation, resilience, and what's ahead in media technology. I'm Nicole Flynn, your host. I'm a marketing executive in the technology space. Each week we will be exploring the latest trends around how leaders adapt in a disrupted world and prepare for a brighter tomorrow.

We're going to speak to the innovators who are reimagining technology in new ways. Thank you for joining us. Hello, and thank you for listening in on today's discussion, video learning in fall 2020. Perhaps this is one of the more important topics that we've covered in a while. It goes without much description beyond saying that 2020 has been a year of massive challenges.

COVID-19 has impacted us all personally and professionally, not only as the country but as an entire world. So today we wanna focus on a slice of those facing the global pandemic and talk about learning and higher education. Educators are facing an uphill battle both ways in the snow without shoes on right now preparing for a safe and seamless fall 2020 education experience.

Whether a school decides on in person classes or not, there are a lot of decisions that need to be made with everyone's safety in mind, as well as continuing to provide quality education. So cielo24 is pleased to be able to offer this dialogue today as a complimentary offering to anyone who would like access to this presentation.

We are able to do that because Cindy Pottenger from Cuyahoga Community College has generously offered her time and expertise to help us and help anyone tuning in. So with that, let's turn to our focus for today's speakers. Joining us today on this call are Cindy Pottenger, Director of Online Learning and Academic Technology at Cuyahoga Community College.

Cindy, welcome to the presentation.
>> Great to be here.
>> Thank you, as well we have another guest speaking, Natalie Enders. Natalie Enders is an operations and marketing intern at cielo24. But Natalie Enders also attends the University of California, Santa Barbara, and will be presenting a student perspective.

Welcome, Natalie.
>> Hi, thank you for having me.
>> Yeah, and from cielo24 we have Shanna Johnson, cielo24's Chief Executive Officer.
>> Great to be here.
>> Great to have you, Shanna, and last but certainly not least, Joe Rocco. Joe Rocco is the director of account management at cielo24.

Joe, lovely to have you on the line.
>> Thanks a lot for having me,
>> Of course, so with that, let's turn to our focus on today's presentation. A big thank you in advance to all of you. So we just covered our speakers. And after that we're gonna open this presentation with our thoughts on reimagining higher education in the COVID-19 world.

Beyond that, we'll get to some really interesting Q&A from Cindy at Cuyahoga Community College as well as to get a student perspective to follow that out. And after that, we'll have our closing remarks. With that, I think we should turn it over to Shanna, our CEO at cielo24, to give us a brief introduction as to why we're here at cielo24 having this discussion with Cuyahoga and a student.


>> Absolutely, thanks, Nicole. Very excited to be here, excited to share these perspectives with all of our viewers. As Nicole mentioned, I'm Shanna Johnson, I'm the CEO of cielo24. And I wanted to share a little bit about our company before we really get started. cielo24 has been supporting colleges and universities with captioning and transcripts for accessibility since 2012.

We're a technology company at heart, and we released the very first video metadata and captioning API way back in 2012. Since then, we've developed a broad platform and suite of services to create the data that powers discovery, reach, engagement, and compliance for online media to organizations around the world.

Our tools are full featured and customizable, including custom user roles and permissions. Automated integrations with major video hosting platforms and edtech tools, robust account management, and more. We service a broad range of clients in education, entertainment, and enterprise. 2020 has obviously been a wild year on pretty much every front.

But there's no question that the challenges facing educators have been unique and acute. As a mother of two school aged children, I can tell you I never would have thought you could successfully deploy a remote learning program for a first grader. But I can sit here and tell you you can and they did, with varying degrees of success in my house.

In higher ed, with so many courses forced to go online this spring, we've watched institutions struggle with creating or scaling their distance learning programs. And we wanted to share some insights that we've learned through this process. We've had a lot of conversations with our clients in higher ed.

And we've been trying to read the tea leaves alongside pretty much everyone else to understand how they're planning for fall 2020 semester and beyond. Obviously, planning in the COVID era is unpredictable. How do you prepare for an upcoming fiscal year without knowing whether some or all of your courses will be delivered in an on campus or remote environment?

How do you ensure your courses are accessible, inclusive, and compliant? And how do you prepare for contingencies as the guidance from local and state governments continues to change? While there are obviously challenges in the planning and execution of remote learning in the COVID era, there's also opportunity. It's likely that we'll continue to see this increase in remote learning persist far beyond this pandemic and become pretty much the new normal.

Just as colleges and universities have invested in campus amenities to attract new students, investing in a robust online learning program will become an investment in future enrollment from our perspective. So when building out your program, you should consider many different perspectives. The educators and content creators, the administrators, and garner as much student feedback as possible.

Think of your remote learning program as another tool in your arsenal to attract students and deliver a high quality educational experience. This challenging time may just be the impetus for institutions to establish and grow a best in class program on the leading edge of the future of higher education.

So before we dive into our first panelist interview, I did wanna share some resources that our viewers could find helpful. These links that we're sharing will direct you to resources for educators and administrators both in the K through 12 realm and also higher education. If you're looking for guidance on if and when to open, obviously you want to take into consideration feedback and guidelines from the CDC and also state and local authorities.

So we obviously recommend checking with those authorities to understand the requirements in your location before making these important decisions. The next slide is an overview of very recent statistics that breaks down how institutions have been thinking about fall 2020. Based on this information today, clearly the majority are planning for in person experiences, in person courses in the fall.

But if you look at the other options here, most are really looking at a hybrid model or even planning for 100% online. I think if there's one thing we know, if we've learned anything in the past few weeks, it's that this situation is fluid. And most universities and colleges are going to have to be fluid as well as they prepare.

And just as we look to adapt to the public health situations in each of our communities, I think most administrations are finding they're going to have to adjust, and sort of a cap for all of these potential scenarios in the future. So now I'd like to turn things over to Joe DeRocco, he's our director of account management here at cielo24.

And he's gonna dig a little deeper into the use case for Cuyahoga Community College, Joe?
>> Thanks Shawna, and Cindy, thank you so much for joining us today. Back when, I guess the first part of March and so forth, when the COVID emergency, if you want to call it that, started to happen, I know you reached out almost immediately.

Because you were really at the forefront of trying to figure out how best to adapt to the circumstance and provide the appropriate accommodations and accessibility for your student body. So when we were putting this together, it made a tremendous amount of sense in my mind, and in the rest of the team's, to invite you to share some of the information and the thought process that you had as you began to respond to COVID.

So, welcome, thanks so much for taking some time today. Let me dive in by saying how did Cuyahoga respond immediately after COVID-19 really hit?
>> Well, we really looked at the infrastructure that we had in terms of storage and related issues with Blackboard and Mediasite, because Mediasite is our video streaming solution.

And we upgraded and increased capacities, and cielo24 was one of those institutions as well. And we determined how we needed to support the systems that we had. So we really upgraded and increased our capacities and determined how we needed to support the systems we had. When COVID hit it was, at least here in Ohio, it was mid March and students and faculty were on spring break.

And it was determined by administration that existing online courses would resume as normal after the break. But our face-to-face courses would take an extra week off to give faculty time to prepare for online remote delivery. The department that I'm in, the Online Learning and Academic Technology Department, or OLAT, we're a big school for acronyms, so OLAT created a Blackboard continuity template for those courses that had been face-to-face.

And the template had How To videos embedded for both faculty and students for those that were unfamiliar with Blackboard. We also ramped up our Blackboard training for faculty. It was already online so we just ramped up the number of sessions that we were offering. And we began training faculty in the use of Mediasite and WebEx as well because their use really exploded when COVID hit.

We had to look very carefully at our helpdesk, and we expanded it. We took on personnel from other departments and faculty who were willing to provide assistance when needed to man the extended helpdesk. And then we trained those people on the SmartView ticketing system and established tiers for support.

We were also fortunate in the fact that we could hire a former employee as a consultant. She was familiar with the systems here at Tri-C but she had recently moved out of state. Having her be familiar, really she was able to hit the ground running. And we used our social media, we have an Online Learning at Tri-C Facebook page and that influenced communication from other departments.

And the last thing we did, we established a continuity guide both for students and for faculty. Those were some of the things that we did when COVID hit.
>> Well, congratulations to you guys because that's as well thought out and responsive as I can imagine. It sounds like, based on what you you were talking about, there that there may have been some sort of thought process prior to something like COVID-19 to develop an emergency plan or something similar to this.

Can you share some of the thoughts on that?
>> Well, we really had a plan but we didn't have a plan, because we reorganized, the department reorganized, and the plan was pre-reorganization. So we really weren't able to use it because of the changes to the department. And plus we had implemented a number of technologies that were used in online learning, that were different than what were in the plan.

So it really wasn't suitable for us, but it did have at least some steps that, yeah, we'll have to do this, and yeah, we'll have to do that. But it wasn't a plan that we could just sit down and execute. Yeah, well, I mean, I feel like it's super helpful to have had at least something to start from, even if all the match-ups didn't work exactly correctly.

Some of the stuff gets kinda crossed off I would think.
>> Yeah.
>> So you've developed this comprehensive system of support tickets, and helpdesks, and training, and so forth. How was the response in the community, the college community, both from a student perspective and faculty perspective, and then maybe also even from sort of an administrative perspective as y'all moved forward?


>> Well, we're fortunate in that we have a lot of engaged faculty and they took advantage of the virtual training opportunities we offered. And many looked for assistance through our Centers for Learning Excellence, which were on campus facilities that help faculty face-to-face. We have four campuses, so we have these Centers for Learning Excellence on each campus.

And they were really able to hit the ground running too in terms of giving support. Everyone was tied into the helpdesk so the tickets were routed as needed. If somebody needed comprehensive support, then they went to the Centers for Learning Excellence staff, depending on which campus they came from.

So that was really something that faculty looked for assistance and were able to receive it. The provost communicated regularly to faculty, as well as to students, and we had put together, like I had mentioned, the continuity guides. So a lot of the questions that students would ask, or faculty would ask, were already answered in that continuity guide.

It was just a matter of either reviewing the plan with the faculty member or just reading what we had written in the continuity plan to help them get through whatever they were facing. And we're fortunate in the institution really backed up the expansion of necessary products and services.


>> Right.
>> Because we did have to double our storage with Blackboard, we did have to double our storage with Mediasite. We nearly quadrupled the instance we had with our proctoring service. So it was it was good that we were able to do these things and not have to scrounge for dollars.


>> Yeah, that's terrific. The question here is, and maybe you've kind of half answered it already, but was there a decision making process involved in what should be captioned and how it should be captioned? Or was it more a matter of, we now know that by transitioning Pretty much everything needs to be captioned.

How did you make some decisions on how to proceed with the captioning program?
>> Well, we suggest to faculty that if a video is going to be used for more than one term or if they have a student with accessibility needs, they should request captions at the time of the video deployment.


>> Got it.
>> And in using Mediasite to record and store our online course media we had how to request captions as part of the Mediasite training.
>> Uh-huh.
>> It was really up to the faculty member whether to click the buttons to go for captions or not, but I think the majority of them did.

Our captioning needs grew exponentially. And we had the same suggestion for Webex sessions that were recorded and converted into MP4s and then uploaded into Mediasite. So a lot of those were captioned as well. And we recently at the college deployed a tool called Ally. I don't know whether you're familiar with it, you probably are given the field that you're in.

But it integrates with Blackboard to provide insight on course accessibility. So that helped drive the accessibility improvements at the institution, so faculty were a little bit more conscious of the need to caption their videos. So with its deployment came a new focus on making course content more accessible, and using cielo24 made it easy to request the captions and make the videos accessible.


>> Well, that's great to hear. The way you discuss your initiatives and your programs here and stuff. It's terrific that you're as sort of edtech forward as you are in your willingness to adopt and adapt to various circumstances. And I feel like that may have helped really support your captioning program as we hit the COVID era.


>> Yeah, we have an executive director that's very tech savvy and really looks to engineer success within the LMS. So anything that could connect with Blackboard and make life easier for students and faculty we look to engineer a solution using it.
>> Great, so here we've gotten through spring term, we're in summer term right now and obviously fall and then next year and so forth.

Has there been a sort of structured approach to thinking about how to plan for COVID for the upcoming semesters?
>> Well, there has been, we've updated course descriptions. A lot of faculty had some input on these descriptions where we have online with no set meeting time. So that's a traditional web-based course.

Where students are told that there's, it's taught fully online and won't require any participation in live or web classes at any specific times. And then we've got a different mode called online with web meeting times. So these courses will be taught with the expectation that students will participate in live web classes on specific days and times.

And the days and times are listed in the schedule. And then we have online with some campus meeting times. And this is really the hybrid model that we've had in the past. And these were more or less designed for classes that require a campus presence, whether they be clinicals or-


>> Lab, things like that.
>> Labs, the police academy, they have to be there, the fire academy, they have to be there and things like that. So there's some classes that have those sort of meeting times and then there's the the traditional class, which is definitely the minority of classes that we're offering in the fall.

But again, for some classes that require a campus presence, they'll be taught with set meeting times. And students, of course, will be required to wear face coverings and practice safe distancing.
>> Got it, so just as a sort of final wrap up here now that you've taken this journey, this COVID journey, if you will, and have been able to respond to it institutionally.

Do you have any advice for other colleges or universities or something that are struggling with figuring out how to plan for the fall?
>> Well, you really have to plan with the current information you have. And it's great that you reference the CDC recommendations and state and local requirements because you really have to use what you have and plan, but you also have to plan for contingencies.

So I would say, look holistically at your technology and expand what's functioning well for your students and faculty. We were very bombarded with faculty wanting to try this and try this and can we do this and can we do that? And we really had to put our foot down and say we're not gonna start something new that we're not able to support.

Well, some faculty did go off on their own. But with the realization that they really couldn't come to us or the help desk for any support. So the faculty and the students, we really looked to them to use what we had. And then we trained, and we trained, and did I mention that we trained?

We really put out a lot of information to faculty about the technologies that we had and how to use them. And another piece of advice would be, be transparent with your faculty and with administration, and really staff your help desk with as many qualified individuals as you can.

And stress the fact that if you need help contact the help desk because there we had a way to track what was happening. And if something was happening to try and avert any further happenings of something going wrong by having the ticketing system. And of course, take a look at how accessible your course content is.

And set up a realistic process for handling video within the LMS that's seamless and easy to use for both the faculty and the students, and again, Mediasite's been great for us. And we tried to stress consistency by using course and syllabus templates as well so faculty aren't necessarily reinventing the wheel.


>> Yeah, that's terrific. Cindy, I wanna say a very big thank you to you for sharing this information with us. I think that it's really eye opening and super helpful for us at cielo24. And I believe it's going to be extremely helpful for other colleges and universities and so forth who are working their way through this.

I will give you a virtual clap right now. That was terrific, thank you so much for your time today.
>> Well, thank you. And I hope it helps someone.
>> Me too, Shawna?
>> Thanks, Joe, and thanks, Cindy. I think it's definitely gonna help a lot of our viewers, without question.

Now I'd like to introduce Natalie Andres. She's a rising senior at UC Santa Barbara and she's also an intern here at cielo24. I'm gonna let her share a little bit about her work with the disabled students program and then dig into her experience on the receiving end of the remote education experience this spring, Natalie?


>> Hi, thanks for having me. So the biggest thing that I've learned from this experience is how individualized both learning and teaching are, and that every student has different learning strategies that work for them. And pre-COVID-19 this wasn't always incorporated into class programs and that students were often faced with finding their own ways to process and to learn the information.

It was a lot more generalized. I think as higher education is now transitioning into this online and hybrid learning styles that it's a great opportunity to kind of reevaluate this one-size-fit-all education style. So I'm really excited to see where higher education goes now with this online environment.
>> That's great, thanks so much, Natalie.

Let's dig a little deeper. Obviously, spring semester, did you go entirely online?
>> Yeah, so at the end of winter quarter UCSB moved to have finals online. And then moving into spring quarter, everything was moved completely remotely. And this had its challenges but was also a very, had a learning curve but in the end I think that the programs were developed so that we could have at least a similar education.


>> Excellent, what specifically worked?
>> So through my experience, what I found was that the classes that utilized both asynchronous and synchronous elements, such as having a recorded lecture and assigned readings, but also an opportunity for live discussions or live office hours, were the most successful because this really kept students engaged.

And the information, I found that I was retaining it more because I was constantly engaging with the material rather than certain courses that were just pre-recorded lectures and readings, and everything was very put on the student. It was nice to have some sort of interactive environment. But I think overall, just having as many resources as possible was extremely helpful because we were all figuring out what kind of learning styles worked and which ones didn't as we transitioned to online learning.

And then in addition to this, especially with students going back home and spending the shelter in place orders with their families, that time zones became very important for classes. So even the classes that had pre-recorded lectures. One thing I found really successful was that these classes would offer the lecture for 24 hours to kinda keep people accountable and provide a more scheduled and structured learning environment.

But also providing everyone with equal opportunity and not having international students having to do their classes in the middle of the night, which is not something that us students are used to doing. And then also just having videos that had transcripts and captions were also incredibly helpful because they really allowed us to go back and see the information in writing.

Which just helps reinforce the information rather than just having it verbally. And also, we could then go back for clarification throughout the course, it would really help for studying. And that was just really beneficial to have the information given to you in multiple ways. And I think overall, just what really was beneficial for the learning environment was just kinda changing the whole way of teaching to a more holistic approach.

Whereas, I was used to having only one midterm, one final for every class. Whereas with online learning, my education became a lot more focused on weekly assignments, and quizzes, and take-home exams. That really fostered a more thorough understanding of the material rather than just memorization.
>> Mm, that makes a ton of sense.

I guess the flip side of that question is, what didn't work from your perspective? What was less successful?
>> Yeah, so the classes that I found myself kind of wishing there was more or that it just didn't quite work for me was my lectures that were just pre-recorded, posted.

Readings that were posted and then students were expected to engage with that information the same way they would in person, which just wasn't the case. I think that every class should really utilize having captions and transcripts because it really just adds to the whole learning experience and it becomes a lot more engaging as a video rather than just passive information.

And especially because technology became a really hard, technology just was, it had a learning curve to it for both the students and the faculty. So at times the audio would cut out for my classes and I would kind of just be out of luck if it was just pre-recorded.

Whereas my classes that had captions and transcripts, I could go back and see exactly what my professor meant, and I wouldn't be missing out on that information. So I think moving forward, just the school's assistance with technology, both hardware and software, is incredibly important, because that's all we rely on to get the information.

So it's understandable that everyone was kinda struggling with this technology. But moving forward, it's nice that we kind of all have got a learning curve and that in the fall the technology really can improve and benefit everyone as much as possible.
>> Yeah, I think you make a ton of great points there.

And, obviously, a lot of technology exists, and as that learning curve sort of closes the gap, I think you do see a difference in the quality of the output for folks that have more robust integrated technology platforms and provide that training that Cindy mentioned as well. Excellent, so what suggestions would you have for colleges and universities planning for some aspect of remote learning into the fall and beyond?


>> Yeah, so I think the biggest thing moving forward is just having open communication between students, professors, TAs, the whole education system as a whole to communicate what worked in the spring, what didn't. And kind of going through what we just went through, I think that's incredibly important for every organization internally.

But also I think having kind of a hybrid sense of, even if you have in person classes, the opportunity to, where students feel uncomfortable still being in person, the opportunity for them to have an online resource, I think is gonna be really important moving forward. And I think this can be really helpful with videos and transcripts, even if there's an in person lecture, that students can go back and still view that if they're, don't feel comfortable attending those.

And I think just overall having understanding and flexibility for individual circumstances is really important. As, even though we've kinda have a quarter under our belt of online learning, that this can still be challenging for a lot of students. And especially incoming freshmen who haven't experienced an actual in Person college experience yet.

So I think just having open communication and just flexibility is really important moving forward.
>> That's awesome, Natalie, you are rock star. We are lucky to have you at cielo24 and certainly thankful that you could share that perspective for all of our viewers because it's just great. So thank you so much.


>> Any time.
>> Joe, I'll go ahead and turn it back over to you if you want to sort of wrap things up for us.
>> Sure, I'd be happy to. So you heard a lot from both Cindy and from Natalie concerning the benefits of video in learning and so forth.

And I just wanna touch on a couple of things very quickly. Obviously, there's a requirement really for accommodations for students with disabilities. But there are a whole number of other important benefits that are associated with captioning and transcription. And as they say, you heard Natalie discuss it, and you heard Cindy discuss it as well.

But it can be things as straightforward as improved access for folks for whom perhaps English isn't a first language. There are those different learning styles that Natalie discussed. There is also, as she discussed, greater engagement with the online course content. Using a variety of tools, you can also search within the video for key topics and so forth.

Essentially what transcription and captioning does is turn video data into searchable data. And that's a hugely powerful tool for educators and for students. And that's what then leads to this notion of the indexable archive, and the search within that. So students can find the information that they're looking for to review and to study for.

And finally, as another benefit, it's really a matter of content discoverability. So perhaps there are students or potential students who are out there who are interested in learning or understanding something about the school. By creating a searchable transcript, you're improving your ability to reach those potential students. And just to continue on the benefits, and this is just a very high level description of the things we just talked about.

Discovery, engagement, reach, compliance, all those things are elevated as a result of captioning and transcription. Ultimately, as an educational institution, our job is to deliver the best possible educational experience for our students. And there is an awful lot of research and actual testimony that captioning and transcription can improve those educational outcomes dramatically.

To wrap things up this afternoon, just want to talk quickly about one of the things that cielo24 is doing in this era of uncertainty. We've created something called flexible pricing that's gonna help our customers plan for these uncertain times. I'm not going to spend any time discussing it right now, but I'd be happy to discuss it.

Or any of the cielo team members would be happy to discuss it with you if you want to reach out to us at education@cielo24.com. I'm gonna turn it over to Nicole to wrap things up.
>> Thanks, Joe.
>> And just quickly, a heartfelt thank you to everyone who participated today.

We really appreciate it.
>> Absolutely, I just want to say I learned a lot myself sitting here listening to both of you. It struck me, there's a lot of overlap between you, Cindy, from your perspective, and Natalie. Technology is a major component of online education. And Cindy, you mentioned some of the using what you have and enriching that helpdesk and training.

And it's ironic that Natalie, and you two haven't met or anything, expressed how those types of tools were important. Natalie, I was also struck with your use of COVID-19 learning actually improving some of the classroom experience. You said holistic, toward learning styles, which was impactful. It wasn't something I thought I was gonna hear.

So what a rich discussion, with many considerations. And obviously, collaboration is required by all of us to ensure that education is protected through this health crisis. So with that, thank you to all of our speakers and thank you to anyone listening in, we appreciate your time and attention.

Should anyone want to reach out, like Joe said, for any of our panelist communication, go ahead and email us at education@cielo24.com. And we will route your request to the proper person. So thank you again to all of you, and your friends and family, that you stay healthy and happy, thank you.