Case Study: Chatham University Makes the Switch to YuJa’s Comprehensive Video Platform for Ease of Use, Robust Capabilities and Ongoing Support
Lauren Panton, Director, Instructional Technology and Teaching Development at Chatham University was at a conference when she learned about YuJa’s suite of ed-tech products.
She was particularly interested in the Enterprise Video Platform, an all-in-one, cloud-hosted solution that enables institutions to securely create, manage, and distribute video and other media content. “I was impressed with the product and customer service experience,” Panton said, and when the university was looking for an alternative video platform, “we were really pleased with how the software product has grown, features have expanded, and the ease of use. We were excited about a lot of the functionalities that did not exist with our existing vendor.”
Chatham University had been using its former video platform for over a decade, but administrators were unhappy with changes to the license and model, features, and support.
Read the full case study here.
YuJa Announces 2023 Scholarship Winner
Students entered essays on a variety of topics, including artificial intelligence, virtual and augmented reality, video conferencing, medical advancements, Chat GPT, and more.
A panel of judges selected Esther Kim as the winner. Esther is a student at the University of Southern California, where she is majoring in occupational therapy. Her essay was titled “Assistive Technology Devices.” In it, she highlights how assistive technology devices have transformed the lives of nonverbal individuals with autism by providing them with a means to communicate, increasing their independence, and fostering social interaction.
Read more about Esther below and watch this video spotlight to learn more.
Tell us about yourself.
“I want to still be actively involved in volunteering with special needs organizations in my free time and help in any way I can with my experiences and expertise.”
My name is Esther Kim. I am extremely passionate about helping the special needs community because my younger brother Joseph, who has autism, changed my life. I am very active and athletic so I love spending time outdoors, constantly working on improving myself and my health.
In my free time, I crochet all sorts of knick-knacks and clothes while watching an exciting horror film or Friends for the 10th time in a row.
What has been your best experience in school?
My experience in school has been so fulfilling in many ways. Some of my best memories and experiences has been exploring the Los Angeles area including the beaches, museums, amusement parks, and all of the concerts and events around USC.
What influenced your choice of major?
My younger brother Joseph heavily influenced my choice of occupational therapy as a major because I was able to witness firsthand how impactful this career can be for people with specific needs. This major has been a dream and a goal of mine since middle school so it feels unreal to be living out my dream.
How do you envision yourself in five years?
In five years I will hopefully be working as an occupational therapist at a clinic with children with special needs. I want to still be actively involved in volunteering with special needs organizations in my free time and help in any way I can with my experiences and expertise.
What do you hope to learn from your college experience?
From my college experience, I hope to learn as much as I can about autism spectrum disorder. I have so much hands-on experience, spending so much time with people on the spectrum but I would love to really learn about and get a deeper understanding on the biology, science, and quirks of autism spectrum disorder.
YuJa to Present at Canadian Symposium on Academic Integrity
The in-person conference will be held at the University of Manitoba Fort Gerry campus in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada June 1-2, 2023.
CSAI brings together the community of experts, leaders, and champions of academic integrity in higher education.
“YuJa is pleased to be a part of the symposium and to share our knowledge on academic integrity with other champions in higher education,” said Nathan Arora, Chief Business Officer at YuJa, Inc.
”YuJa is pleased to be a part of the symposium and to share our knowledge on academic integrity with other champions in higher education.”
CSAI Bi-Annual Conference is Canada’s leading conference dedicated to creating cultures of academic integrity, promoting the values of honesty, trust, responsibility, fairness, respect, and courage, and elevating the quality of teaching and learning across post-secondary education.
Yennhu Nguyen, Director of Client Success, will present “Using YuJa Verity to Ensure Academic Integrity.” YuJa Verity Test Proctoring Platform is one tool in YuJa’s suite of ed-tech products that enables automated and live online proctoring. YuJa Verity integrates directly with an institution’s Learning Management System and Single Sign-On tools to securely deliver and manage exams, including from third-party vendors.
YuJa is a Silver level sponsor of the conference.
More About the CSAI Conference
Founded in 2019, CSAI brings together the community of experts, leaders, and champions of academic integrity in higher education. This community consists of a diverse group of people including post-secondary educators, librarians, student advocates, students, as well as administrators, and sponsors.
CSAI 2023 will provide many opportunities to engage with academic integrity champions from across Canada and internationally and to gain new insights into other key issues that intersect with academic integrity.
Well-known keynote speakers will share their knowledge and wisdom during the conference program. Additional program highlights include dynamic discussions, interactive workshops, and scholarly presentations. This year’s symposium centres on the theme of Looking to the Future of Academic Integrity.
Case Study: YuJa Panorama Has Proved to be an Invaluable Accessibility Tool at River Parishes Community College
One thing that stood out, McCrary said, was that instructors wanted to provide accessibility for students beyond the built-in tools available in the learning management system.
“We have a tight-knit community within the Louisiana Community and Technical College System, and through a contact at Delgado Community College, we learned about YuJa Panorama,” McCrary said. “What really struck me was how we could easily reach the goals we wanted to for our students.”
The Legacy of Judy Heumann, “The Mother of Disability Rights”
As a child in 1949 living in Brooklyn, New York, Heumann contracted polio and began using a wheelchair for mobility. At the age of five, she was deemed a “fire hazard,” and denied entry to school, according to her website. As a child, her mother advocated for her and she was eventually allowed into school. Though this was among the first discriminatory acts against her, it was not the last.
“Some people say that what I did changed the world, but really, I simply refused to accept what I was told about who I could be. And I was willing to make a fuss about it.”
“It was still a radical claim that disabled people didn’t see themselves, or their conditions, as something to be pitied. Or that they insisted what most held them back wasn’t their health condition but society’s exclusion — maybe attitudes that they were less capable to do a job, go to college or find romance; or a physical barrier, like a sidewalk without a curb cut,” said NPR’s Joseph Shapiro in an article about Heumann.
Shapiro shared that he wrote an article about disability rights in 1987 in which Heumann said “Disability only becomes a tragedy when society fails to provide the things we need to lead our lives — job opportunities or barrier-free buildings, for example,” she said. “It is not a tragedy to me that I’m living in a wheelchair.” The article was not published because the idea she relayed seemed so “unexpected and strange.”
Starting a Revolution
In 1970, after Heumann passed her oral and written teaching exams, but she ultimately failed the medical exam where she was again deemed a “fire hazard.” This time, examiners said she would not be able to evacuate children or herself during an emergency. Heumann sued the board of education to allow her to become a teacher. The New York Times headline read “Woman in Wheel Chair Sues to Become Teacher” and the article noted she would be the city’s first teacher in a wheelchair. Her lawyers said the case was the first such civil rights suit ever filed in a federal court.
She was instrumental in the development and passage of Section 504, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Rehabilitation Act, and the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which “have been advancing the inclusion of disabled people in the US and around the world and fighting to end discrimination against all those with disabilities.”
“Section 504 became a model for the ADA, which would extend the principles of non-discrimination to all public accommodations, employment, transportation, communications and access to state and local government programs,” NPR said. That means if you’ve ever used an elevator in a subway station or busy public area, if you used the curb cuts to more easily get on a sidewalk, or if you’ve used the accessible restrooms in a public space, you’ve benefited from the ADA. Closed captions, transcripts, and website accessibility, are all other examples of services for disabled people that benefit everyone.
When Richard Nixon vetoed the 1972 Rehabilitation act, Heumann helped lead a protest that shut down traffic in Manhattan. She also launched a 26-day sit-in at a federal building in San Francisco to get Section 504 of the revived Rehabilitation Act enforced. “(The sit-in) has often been described as the longest nonviolent occupation of a federal building in American history,” The New York Times reported.
More Advocacy Efforts
Heumann never stopped at securing rights for herself, but continued her work for others. Heumann co-founded the World Institute on Disability (WID), which was among the first global disability rights organizations led by people with disabilities. The institute is “dedicated to designing, building, and supporting whole community solutions by removing barriers to include people with disabilities.”
Heumann served the Clinton Administration as the Assistant Secretary for the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services in the Department of Education from 1993 to 2001. From 2002 to 2006, she was the World Bank’s first Adviser on Disability and Development.
She was appointed by President Barack Obama as the first Special Advisor for International Disability Rights in the U.S. Department of State, a position she held from 2010-2017. She also was the Director for the Department on Disability Services and responsible for the Developmental Disability Administration and the Rehabilitation Services Administration.
The American Civil Liberties Union said she traveled to countries on every continent to help change the way people perceive those with disabilities and to help remove barriers they face in their everyday lives. Between 2000 and 2015, 181 countries passed disability civil rights modeled after the ADA, according to NPR.
Documentary and Book Release
Just before the pandemic, Heumann was featured in a documentary released at the 2020 Sundance film festival. “Crip Camp: A Disability Revolution,” was about Heumann and others who attended a summer camp (Camp Janed) for children with disabilities in the Catskills. Heumann later was a counselor at the camp. Camp Janed became “the beginnings of a revolution.”
“What I want is for the book and the film — and other books and films — to allow people to recognize the real absence of representation of disability in media, broadly speaking”
Heumann also has a memoir, “Being Heumann: An Unrepentant Memoir of a Disability Rights Activist.” Heumann told The Cut, “What I want is for the book and the film — and other books and films — to allow people to recognize the real absence of representation of disability in media, broadly speaking. Black disabled people, Latino disabled people, Asian disabled people, indigenous disabled people, disabled people with visible and invisible disabilities — they’re pretty absent. And yet, in the United States, it’s more than 20 percent of our population. Disability is something that all families experience, temporarily or permanently.”
“Some people say that what I did changed the world,” she wrote, “But really, I simply refused to accept what I was told about who I could be. And I was willing to make a fuss about it.”
Learn more about Judy Heumann on her website.
Photos courtesy of Judithheumann.com
Case Study: How Oakland University Uses YuJa’s Robust Suite of Ed-Tech Tools to Enhance Instruction Across Live, Hybrid and Hyflex Courses
Led by Dan Arnold, Ph.D., OU’s Manager of Support Services, e-Learning and Instructional Support, a selection committee of about a dozen users from various departments watched demonstrations and scored finalists.
“YuJa got on our radar as part of the procurement process. A lot of vendors came in with use cases strictly on video conferencing that could be used in a way for lecture capture, but not distinct tools for video conferencing as well as lecture capture,” Arnold recalled.
Read the full case study here.
Case Study: Southern Illinois University Edwardsville Uses YuJa’s Video Platform to Deliver High-Quality Media Experiences to More Than 13,000 Students
Several years ago, SIUE had a locally-hosted, homegrown media streaming solution. Matthew Schmitz, Associate Director of Online and Blended Education, said the solution worked, but had a lot of disadvantages in that the interface wasn’t user-friendly, the public couldn’t upload content, and it was “load heavy” for the institution’s Information Technology Services (ITS) department.
Read the full case study here.
Case Study: Canada’s Largest Art, Design, and Media University, OCAD U, Turns to YuJa to Enhance Art and Design Education
Founded in 1876, OCAD U is dedicated to art and design education, practice and research and to knowledge creation and invention across a wide range of disciplines. OCAD U continuously builds on its traditional, studio-based strengths, adding new approaches to learning that champion cross-disciplinary practices, collaboration and the integration of emerging technologies.
Read the full case study here.
YuJa Contributes to Heartland Community College and Illinois Community Colleges Online’s Accessibility Efforts
Heartland Community College, a public community college with four campuses in Illinois, has made tremendous strides in accessibility and has helped lead Illinois Community College Online’s accessibility efforts. One of the primary drivers has been YuJa Panorama, one product in YuJa’s suite of high-impact media solutions that help institutions deliver accessible, engaging video and media content to users.
“…the shining star of this transition is (YuJa) Panorama.”
YuJa Panorama enhances accessibility with auto-generation of a number of Accessible Alternatives of course material in the background — from HTML, to electronic Braille, EPUB, audio (speech-to-text), high contrast, tagged PDF files and more and provides a Visual Gauge for a quick check of accessibility. Detailed reports at a course and institution level help measure and track accessibility.
Anna Catterson, Ph.D., Executive Director, Online Learning & Instructional Technologies at Heartland Community College and an Assistant Professor, Baker University School of Education and Jewel Crowley-Custis, Coordinator of Instructional Technologies at Heartland Community College recently published a white paper Breaking Down Barriers in the Heartland to highlight the institution’s journey to accessibility.
“When Heartland Community College began this journey, the college was not aware of many accessibility laws and regulations, especially when it came to Section 508 Refresh,” the whitepaper states. “Our college was not alone, in fact, after a poll completed in 2019, over 85% of community colleges in Illinois reported that they had no accessibility plan or timeline (Illinois Community Colleges Online, 2019).”
“Panorama is integrated into every course and is viewable on both the faculty and student side. The faculty are provided an accessibility score for their entire course with suggestions on how to improve accessibility.”
The institution launched YuJa’s Enterprise Video Platform and YuJa Panorama for Digital Accessibility this past fall. “While YuJa has expanded options for video recording, including the automatic addition of captions to each video recorded or uploaded, a video editor and various options of recording features, and video quizzing, the shining star of this transition is Panorama,” the authors note.
“Panorama is integrated into every course and is viewable on both the faculty and student side. The faculty are provided an accessibility score for their entire course with suggestions on how to improve accessibility, especially for their documents. Each document that is uploaded is also provided with a scale of how accessible it is. Students have the option to download every document, such as a syllabus into various formats, including braille, epub, text-to-speech, and more. To date, since the implementation of Panorama, Heartland Community College’s overall accessibility rate for Canvas courses is 64% with over 2000 uploaded files with no accessibility issues.”
Read the full whitepaper on LinkedIn.
YuJa Expands AV Support to NCast Hardware Encoders to Help Institutions Seamlessly Deliver Multimedia Presentations
YuJa’s integration with NCast will enable instructors to automatically import recordings into the YuJa Video Content Management System (CMS).
The integration brings together the scheduling, automation, and previewing tools of YuJa’s CMS with NCast’s presentation and recording hardware to help deliver a comprehensive media delivery system.
“With simple setup and integration into the YuJa Enterprise Video Platform, NCast encoders are ready for lecture capture, video conferencing, digital asset management, live streaming events or a host of other uses.”
YuJa provides a powerful combination that delivers across devices. With simple setup and integration into the YuJa Enterprise Video Platform, NCast encoders are ready for lecture capture, video conferencing, digital asset management, live streaming events or a host of other uses.
This newest partnership complements YuJa’s market-leading integration with other hardware encoders, including Matrox, Extron, and Epiphan, ensuring institutions can streamline recording, editing, and streaming.
YuJa partners with a host of other technology and channel partners. View all of our partners.