Tech Tips: Get to Know Mediasite

September 6, 2019

Are you a new student at DUSON? Get to know Mediasite! Mediasite is an important tool for all members of the DUSON community, whether you're using it for class lectures, special presentations or departmental training/orientation videos. Follow these tips to make your Mediasite experience the best it can be.

The Mediasite basics for our new students

Mediasite ScreenshotOur Mediasite environment offers a video player that has 24/7 access and built-in features offering the flexibility you need to accommodate your busy schedule. Photo shows the most used controls:

  • Easily pause, rewind or replay recorded lectures whenever you'd like.

  • Change the playback speed. Complex topic? Slow down the recording. Reviewing familiar material? Speed it up. The control panel lets you select half speed, 1.4x, 1.6x, or 2x the playback speed at the click of a button.

  • Change the display window. For an up-close look at slides - or your instructor - simply click the window. Click again to return to the default.

  • View the video in full screen, tap the esc key on your keyboard to return to the default view of the video.

  • Find information about the speaker and the presentation date by clicking the "i" icon.

Troubleshooting

Having trouble viewing the videos? Try these steps:

  • Check your audio and video connection by clicking here

  • Seeing a login screen when trying to access a new video? Try playing a previously-viewed video for a few seconds. This often works by passing your login credentials to the new video.

  • Connect where there is a strong internet connection with little traffic. Coffee shops and restaurants will usually provide a poor Mediasite experience.

  • Still no luck? Contact the IT Service Desk at 919-684-9200 or via email at citdl@mc.duke.edu.

For Faculty - 5 Ways to Increase Student Engagement Using Mediasite

  1. Help Students Measure Their Own Progress with Quizzing

    1. Instructors can choose a specific moment in an on-demand vide to embed a quiz. When students watch, the video will stop at that point, and the quiz will appear. Students must take the quiz to continue

    2. Quizzes are an easy way to track student performance, prime students for test material, and provide an opportunity for them to sel-assess how well they understand course material

  2. Give Instructors RealTime Feedback on Class Comprehension

    1. While quizzes assess individual comprehension, polls help instructors gauge a class' perspective as a whole

    2. Polls can take place on the fly during live webcasts to give instructors real-time feedback on students' understanding of the concepts

  3. Facilitate Commenting and Discussions

    1. Annotations were designed to create a collaborative forum for students and their instructors. Think of it as a virtual yellow sticky note added to a particular part of a video.

    2. An instructor might add an annotation to say, "This part is really important to grasp," or to include a link to deeper information

  4. Make it Easy to Ask and Answer Questions

    1. With Mediasite's moderated Q&A feature, viewers have easy, on-the-fly questioning power

    2. Students can submit a question, and even timestamp it, whenever they want while viewing a video - live and on-demand. And if a question is answered during a live stream, it then becomes part of the on-demand video

  5. Enable Students to Actively Learn

    1. Mediasite's searchable, indexed video libraries provides students with many options for accessing materials and resources that support their learning

    2. With deep engagement features and powerful search and social sharing, users can create customized video playlists via Mediasite channels

Here’s our Tech Tip of the Week –

Nobody likes a frozen browser tab. It usually happens when you have a lot of other tabs active. Do you wait it out or cut your losses and close your browser, forcing you to shut down all of your open tabs?

Next time this happens, try this:

  1. Right click on the Taskbar, then open Task Manager;

  2. Select the Processes tab;

  3. Find the web browser listing (there will be a number in parenthesis - this is the number of tabs you have open);

    1. Right click on the tab that is frozen;

    2. Select End Task;

That's it - the frozen tab should be closed without closing the other open tabs.

Have any questions about this or other tech used at DUSON?

As always, if you have any technical questions or problems, please contact your IT Service Desk at 919-684-9200, or email to citdl@mc.duke.edu.

 

Scroll back to top automatically