-->
Save your FREE seat for Streaming Media Connect this August. Register Now!

Kaltura Upgrades its Cross Campus Media Suite

Article Featured Image

The ability for faculty and students to share their own video content is going to school with the release of Kaltura's version 3.0 of its Cross Campus Media Suite, an online video platform designed for education. Announced Tuesday, this release includes new versions of the platform's plug-ins for the Blackboard Learn, Moodle and Sakai learning management systems (LMS), in addition to a new 4.0 version of the Kaltura MediaSpace campus video portal.

This release debuts user entitlements that enable students and faculty to find and share video content in a variety of ways. Using the LMS plug-ins, such as the Video Building Block for Blackboard Learn version 3.0, users can search and share videos with a single class, or across multiple courses.  Kaltura MediaSpace supports user uploads and permits them to create a content channel that is available only to a select group of people.

MediaSpace also supports the ability for users to record video using a webcam and create screen capture content. For administrators there are user-level statistics available to provide more fine-grained analytics.

Michal Tsur, co-founder and president of Kaltura, says that the company has been focusing on end-user features. She says that "most video platforms are oriented towards content editors," but in education, "faculty and students are the editors." Once you have the content—whether its licensed, captured in the classroom or recorded by faculty and students—Tsur says it's important to make it searchable not just within single courses, but across courses.  The addition of these user entitlements and cross-course sharing features came about in response to discussions the company had with faculty members and instructional designers.

According to Tsur, "the next phase is sharing across institutions." She notes that any one university may have only a few researchers in a given area, but they collaborate with colleagues at many other schools. Institutions should be able to tag content to be available for search and sharing in order to support this and other types of collaboration.

Kaltura says its rich media solutions are in use by more than 500 education institutions worldwide, having grown by 300% in the last year. In response to this growth, Tsur says that the company has doubled in size in the same period. As well, the company is focusing more on out-of-the-box solutions, like MediaSpace, which can be installed and implemented quickly. Kaltura also sponsors user groups, a community team, and user meet-ups to help support the unique needs of education customers.

Version 3.0 of the Cross-Media Platform is available immediately to all customers using Kaltura's hosted, cloud-based solution.

Streaming Covers
Free
for qualified subscribers
Subscribe Now Current Issue Past Issues
Related Articles

Wikipedia Gains a New Video Player, Thanks to Kaltura

After four years and many revisions, Wikipedia has a new and far improved open-source video player from Kaltura.

How to Create a Video Strategy for Colleges and Universities

Captions, interactivity, and lifespan management should all be part of a comprehensive video strategy.

Higher Education Faces a Storm of Change with Video at the Center

Video is transforming how college students learn, but creating a video strategy takes careful planning.

Companies and Suppliers Mentioned