AMSTERDAM, The Netherlands (ISE booth #3A120) — February 2, 2012 — Sonic Foundry, Inc. (NASDAQ: SOFO), the trusted market leader for enterprise webcasting and lecture capture, today announced that its Mediasite webcasting platform has been chosen by the Université Paris Sud in France to webcast its medical school courses.
The Université Paris Sud is the largest campus in France with about 27,000 students and 3,500 employees. In 2011 public reform of the medical studies department doubled the number of students enrolled in courses. After an extensive search process the university implemented Mediasite in September of 2011, deciding to webcast the lectures in high quality video and to make the content available on-demand. For the university, Mediasite offered the most reliable platform with its integrated environment and ease of integration for its large 350-seat classrooms.
“We appreciated the automation of Mediasite with the templates and the presentations pulled directly from the recorders to the central server with no human help needed,” said Eric Briantais Morisson, head of the university’s instructional technology department.
Currently, 90 percent of the medical school and nursing courses are recorded with Mediasite. Those courses create about 400 hours of webcasts each semester.
“The advantage of the recorded presentation is that the students may interact with it at their own pace. It’s a second chance for someone that hasn’t caught the entire message during class. For our medical classes, it’s a big help, because students receive a great deal of knowledge each class, and with Mediasite, they can go back and review,” Briantais Morrison said.
According to Briantais Morrison, Mediasite has become a study platform for students, and the majority of views come two months before final exams. Between September 2010 and June 2011, there were 115,000 views from 1,500 students.
As a state owned university, one of Université Paris Sud’s missions is to share scientific knowledge. In the future, the university hopes to fulfill this by expanding its Mediasite usage to include webcasting live scientific seminars to the public.
“Sonic Foundry is pleased to support The Université Paris Sud as it responds to the student demand for lecture capture,” said Rob Lipps, Executive Vice President of Sales at Sonic Foundry. “The amount of student views the webcasts receive is a testament that educational technology platforms like Mediasite can make a real impact on learning. We’re honored to be the lecture capture partner for Université Paris Sud.”
About Sonic Foundry®, Inc.
Sonic Foundry (NASDAQ: SOFO, www.sonicfoundry.com) is the trusted market leader for enterprise webcasting and lecture capture, providing video communication solutions for education, business and government. Powered by the patented Mediasite webcasting platform and Mediasite Events group, the company empowers people to transform the way they communicate online, using video webcasts to bridge time and distance, accelerate research and improve performance. Product and service names mentioned herein are the trademarks of Sonic Foundry, Inc. or their respective owners.
Certain statements contained in this news release regarding matters that are not historical facts may be forward-looking statements. Because such forward-looking statements include risks and uncertainties, actual results may differ materially from those expressed in or implied by such forward-looking statements. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially include, but are not limited to, uncertainties pertaining to continued market acceptance for Sonic Foundry's products, its ability to succeed in capturing significant revenues from media services and/or systems, the effect of new competitors in its market, integration of acquired business and other risk factors identified from time to time in its filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
