The Future is Now: Video Solutions at the University of Minnesota
By Lauren Marsh
Remember the old photo booths? You and your friend squeezed in, dropped a quarter in the slot, and walked away with a series of photos (usually of funny faces). Imagine being able to step into a video booth on campus, where you could load your text file onto a teleprompter and your image file to serve as a back drop, then walk away with a completed video file to use on a course Web site. Imagine having access to videotaped recordings of class sessions or being able to meet with colleagues at a different geographical location via high definition video conferencing. This is the future of video in higher education, and the Office of Information Technology (OIT) is working right now to make it a reality.
Lance Cunningham, coordinator for the Office of Information Technology’s new Video Solutions unit, will help shape the future of video at the University of Minnesota. Video Solutions represents a new initiative within OIT to consolidate its video resources and services into one unit. One purpose of the new unit is to create an infrastructure to make the use, creation, and distribution of video easier and more streamlined for members of the University community. Another is to make video services more visible and accessible. Through their efforts, Cunningham and his colleagues will redefine the role of video at the University of Minnesota as it pertains to teaching and learning and research.
The initiative to reorganize and expand video services on campus is timely given what Cunningham describes as “a new movement in content creation and multimedia development.” In the not-so-distant past, “people had to use extensive software and hardware to create a video project, and a lot of the tools available weren’t very intuitive.” He points out that now anyone with a webcam and a YouTube account can create a video—albeit one with modest production values—by simply going to a Web site and clicking a record button. Cunningham anticipates that it’s only a matter of time before this technology is widely appropriated for educational purposes. And, if the transformative impact on news coverage, advertising, and entertainment is any indication, the easy distribution of video brought about by YouTube and iTunes stands to significantly change the University’s relationship to the community beyond the ivory tower.
According to Cunningham, a primary goal of the new Video Solutions unit is to help the University achieve “national recognition for its outreach with video productions.” The first significant step toward this end is the University’s participation in the ResearchChannel, a consortium of research and academic institutions whose purpose is to share university research with the public. Their videos are distributed through cable television, the Web, YouTube, and iTunes. The ResearchChannel currently is available to more than 30 million cable television and satellite subscribers, and more than 1.6 million people visit their Web site each year. Now that the University of Minnesota is a member of the consortium, its researchers will be able to disseminate their findings to a national audience. Here on campus, Cunningham and his team will partner with faculty, departmental units, and video producers systemwide to produce video segments in keeping with the ResearchChannel’s specifications and production guidelines. In other words, researchers can focus on their roles as content experts, while the team at Video Solutions will provide the support structure and contribute the expertise and skills needed to create high-quality videos.
And, in the future, when students use the video booths or view a videotaped lecture, or when members of the University community are able to collaborate via video conferencing, they also will be able to focus more on creating the content rather than on developing advanced technical skills. Thanks to the foundation that will be created by the new Video Solutions unit, a clear support structure will be in place and video resources will be easier to discover and use, thus helping the University community realize the full potential of video.
