The Office of Information Technology (OIT) is pleased to introduce the Panopto video recording and hosting platform to the Boise State community. Panopto was chosen by a group of faculty stakeholders, and replaces the Techsmith Relay platform, which will be decommissioned on June 30, 2020.
In addition to the simple video recording and hosting users were accustomed to with Techsmith Relay, Panopto allows students, faculty and staff to do more with their online videos. Some include:
- A powerful search engine. Viewers can search for any word displayed on a screen capture, and most spoken words indexed through Panopto’s Automatic Speech Recognition technology. Words are timestamped, making it easy for viewers to jump to any point of a video. If faculty utilize Panopto’s Blackboard integration, students can search for terms across multiple course videos simultaneously.
- Panopto integrates with Blackboard in multiple ways. Faculty can simply add single videos to a content area, or create a curation of course videos inside a course folder. Additionally, faculty can create graded video assignments, where students are instructed to use Panopto to record and submit their work.
- In addition to Blackboard, Panopto integrates with Zoom’s cloud recording service. Zoom Pro users can choose to record their meetings, and the integration will automatically move them to a personal folder in Panopto.
- Enhanced classroom recording capabilities. Faculty will be able to schedule their lectures to record automatically, negating the need to open up a program and manually record every lecture. Panopto also has the ability to join multiple feeds simultaneously. This would allow faculty to record a Powerpoint screen capture, their webcam, and a mobile phone or tablet capturing a whiteboard all in one video package.
- Threaded discussions and personal notes on videos. Viewers can start a conversation on a video with their classmates or colleagues, or take time stamped notes as a reminder to go back and review.
All Boise State students, faculty and staff have access to Panopto and can begin exploring its capabilities right away. Panopto will be installed in OIT-supported classrooms before the start of Spring semester. Those interested in using it earlier in classrooms, or who wish to schedule automatic recordings for their Spring class, should contact LTS@boisestate.edu.
OIT also has Panopto help resources available, in addition to a curation of help videos available on the Panopto homepage.
In addition, OIT will be working with users to migrate Techsmith Relay videos to the new platform prior to June 2020. If you wish to migrate your content early, feel free to follow our content migration guide, and email LTS@boisestate.edu if you have any questions on this process.