During spring semester 2018 students, faculty, and staff members throughout the University piloted a media management and streaming platform (MMSP) as a continuation of Penn State Information Technology’s (IT) Conferencing and Media Management (CMM) program. Two companies proposed their systems to Penn State in the fall of 2017 and one service was selected for a noncompetitive pilot tested in over fifty courses.
The MMSP will provide a secure and cloud-based platform for Penn Staters to store media files and Zoom recordings. The MMSP would also integrate with Penn State's learning management system, Canvas, to allow students, faculty, and staff members to stream media stored in the MMSP including Zoom recordings.
During the pilot, the MMSP demonstrated it could meet the needs of the University in more than 150 areas from integrations with Canvas and Zoom to creating and publishing media content. Based on that performance and feedback from pilot participants, the CMM Project Team recommended Penn State purchase a contract with the MMSP
Penn State is reviewing the pilot results and will announce a decision to bring the piloted MMSP to the University or explore other services. An announcement regarding the University’s decision will be made available later this summer. A CMM website is being created to provide Penn Staters with additional information on the program’s goals and service offerings.
Conferencing and Media Management program history
In 2016, Penn State IT developed a video management strategy to find a central MMSP and video service for the University. The program initially began with the selection and adoption of Zoom, the enterprise, cloud-based, video conferencing service, in July 2017.
While Zoom was being introduced to the University, a cross-organizational team developed a broad list of requirements for a MMSP service to provide the University with a more efficient solution than the current combination of multiple services including Adobe Connect. Purchasing a MMSP would be the final step of the CMM program.