AP Hogeschool, an exponential progress in blended learning
The AP University of Applied Sciences and Arts Antwerp was founded in 2012 and is a non-profit public higher education institution. Located in the city of Antwerp, it was formed from the merger of Artesis Hogeschool Antwerpen and Plantijn Hogeschool. It offers 30 bachelor programs, 18 associate programs and 9 master programs, with over 16,000 students and 2,000 staff members. The university came to Rapidmooc as it was in need of a scalable and money-saving solution that would ensure its video production could keep pace with its growth in the long term.
Initial challenges
When the university first started needing to create videos, notably during and after the COVID epidemic, the logistics and costs were the main obstacle. A professional team had to be called in to do the recording and the whole project took a huge amount of time, money and effort.
Even though the users were at ease with public speaking, the act of recording themselves in front of the camera would intimidate and destabilise them. Much more than speaking in front of a large crowd.
On top of that, long-format videos soon became obsolete. How could they create full courses that don’t drag on and lose students’ attention? The answer was to stop recording hour-long lectures in favour of short, synthetic and captivating knowledge clips.
The AP Hogeschool Campus
The Rapidmooc Pro 27″ in the MediaLab at AP Hogeschool
Solution
Katya Suykens was put in charge of simplifying and scaling the university’s video production.
As a team coordinator and audiovisual designer of the university’s MediaLab and Mediatheek, she was perfectly placed to know what solution was needed. “Lecturers aren’t audiovisual specialists, we needed something simple that everyone could use.”
The Rapidmooc Pro 27″ seemed the ideal solution.
The built-in hardware met all the specifications, but it was Rapidmooc’s intuitive visual software that was the real game changer.
As Katya put its “Sometimes, all it takes is 5 minutes to explain and everyone says ‘Oh, this is easy'”.
Being so easy to use means lecturers, researchers and other staff members can record their videos with almost zero supervision. They don’t need to open and learn any specialist software or programs… the definition of plug and play technology.
Katya Suykens
Team coordinator & Audiovisual designer, AP Hogeschool
Since covid, there’s been an exponential progress in blended learning. There’s been a big strain on our services, that is why we invested in Rapidmooc. In the past, if lecturers wanted to use blended learning or researchers wanted to talk about their research, we had to do it in a studio and film the whole day. It was very expensive and took hours out of everyone's day. Thanks to Rapidmooc, this is no longer an issue.
Results
So far, almost 150 lecturers and researchers have used the Rapidmooc Pro 27″ video studio to record videos.
With support from Katya and her team in the form of practical workshops, the university’s staff now regularly produce high-quality online course videos and knowledge clips simply and quickly.
Moreover, its built-in teleprompter, on-screen editing and mirror effect reassure users and have allowed them to become much more confident and creative.
But perhaps the most striking result has been on the amount of time it has saved Katya:
“Before, I would spend 50% of my time supervising the recording sessions. Now I can just close the door and they do it all themselves.”
A video recorded by a lecturer at AP Hogeschool using the Rapidmooc Pro
Key figures
100+
Different users
5
minutes for onboarding
50%
time saved
A bright future
Katya’s team will soon move to a new room and facility that will be entirely dedicated to studios. When this happens, they are expecting the number of users to skyrocket as they will be physically much closer to teachers and students.
The studios’ new AI features, as well as other AI tools, will empower users to be much more creative and create videos even quicker.
Many thanks to...
Katya Suykens, the enthusiastic and committed team coordinator of the Mediatheek and Medialab (6 staff members) at APHogeschool, where she has worked for 10+ years.
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