Case study
Belhaven University Turns to YuJa to Support Robust Online Program With Hundreds of Courses, Thousands of Videos and Media Content
Online Program
Belhaven Looks for Video CMS to Support Robust Online Program
Belhaven University, Jackson, Mississippi, uses a fixed curriculum for its online courses that serve over 1,500 students at any given time. Course material is designed and prepared in-house for instructors. Every seven weeks, approximately 180 to 300 sections are launched and taught by hundreds of adjunct instructors. Each course has a number of videos associated with it – anywhere from a handful to dozens, depending on the course – which are recorded on campus and uploaded to YuJa. Behind the scenes is Dr. Rick Upchurch, who serves as Associate Vice President of Adult, Graduate, and Online Studies.
With its robust online program, an organized Video Content Management System (VCMS) is essential. At Belhaven, an Instructional Design team works with the video department to link videos in Canvas. With Canvas Studio*, it was complicated to find the videos to connect to their courses. “It was a nightmare trying to find the videos and get them in the right place,” Upchurch said. “So I began a process of trying to find out what we could do to find a solution. We tested products, and at the end of the test, we felt YuJa best met our needs.”
70
Areas of Study
1,500+
Online Students
1883
Established
4,400
Students
“We tested products, and at the end of the test, we felt YuJa best met our needs.”
About the Client
About Belhaven University
Belhaven University is a private evangelical Christian university in Jackson, Mississippi. Founded in 1883, the university offers traditional majors, programs of general studies, and a number of pre-professional programs.
Use Cases
Course Designers and Instructors Find Features They Like
While YuJa’s most useful capability for the institution has been the ability to have Instructional Designers find the videos they need to add to the courses, subject matter experts also have embraced the YuJa In-Broswer Capture Studio for creating course content.
“Instructors like the platform. The video playback is better for students, and videos are easily captioned and translated to different languages,” Upchurch noted. “If you record different outputs, you have options on how the playback looks and what is emphasized.”
Additionally, some Instructors have started requiring students to submit video presentations, and when they do, “it’s a better experience,” Upchurch said. “They have access to better closed captioning, translation features, and the capture studio.”
YuJa works well inside the Canvas Learning Management System, integrating cleanly, Upchurch said. “We’re very happy with how YuJa works with Canvas overall,” he added.
Accessibility
Belhaven Adds YuJa Panorama for Digital Accessibility to Suite of Tools
Belhaven has implemented YuJa’s accessibility tool, YuJa Panorama for Digital Accessibility, which keeps accessibility at the forefront of instruction by improving accessibility of digital media and course content. Panorama auto generates Accessible Alternatives of course material, scans and checks files for accessibility, and integrates directly into the university’s Learning Management System, Canvas.
“Just this past week, in the midst of revamping the university webpage, we ran up against the need to meet accessibility standards, and we told the vendor about Panorama, which will be used to enhance the accessibility features on our website,” Upchurch remarked. “This was’t something we were looking for in our decision-making process, or something we expected, but it has been a nice feature and works well inside of our Canvas courses.”
“I would 100% give YuJa a high recommendation. YuJa Capture is a more robust capture platform, and the administrative controls are paramount to our institution.”
Recommendation
YuJa’s Ed-Tech Solutions are Customized to Meet Challenges
Many educational software solutions are built around a traditional college experience, Upchurch said, adding that his entire career has been around supporting nontraditional learning experiences and students. Online courses have different priorities around building and delivering course content.
“I would 100% give YuJa a high recommendation. YuJa Capture is a more robust capture platform, and the administrative controls are paramount to our institution,” Upchurch said. “We found YuJa to be incredibly responsive to our requests, willing to add new features, and able to meet the needs we have in recording and placing videos into our courses.”
Additionally, he shared that YuJa’s support and success teams are timely, flexible, and always willing to help.
“The organization thinks about things ahead of the curve and without putting customers in a position of raising costs. Improvements are made to make the experience better and to help us provide better content for learners.”
Highlights
Belhaven University uses a fixed curriculum in its online program. Every seven weeks, the university launches between 180 and 300 online sections.
02.
The university was using Canvas Studio, but because of its unique structure, finding videos was a challenge. YuJa solved this with searchable metadata.
03.
The institution started with the Enterprise Video Platform, but has since expanded with the addition of YuJa Panorama for digital accessibility.
“We found YuJa to be incredibly responsive to our requests, willing to add new features, and able to meet the needs we have in recording and placing videos into our courses.”
Dr. Rick Upchurch, Associate Vice President of Adult, Graduate, and Online Studies
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