Media Space

Media Space is a Web-based enterprise-level platform for managing and delivering collections of video and audio over the Web. Through this service, Northwestern instructors can organize and efficiently publish collections of media clips, such as recorded class lectures and presentations, to the University's Course Management System (CMS), the Northwestern portals at iTunes U and YouTube, or the Web.

NUIT Academic & Research Technologies developed Media Space to provide a uniform campus-wide solution for distributing media for the purpose of furthering teaching, research, and public communication efforts that support the mission of the University.

The origins of Media Space stem from Northwestern University's participation in Opencast, an international consortium of educational technology experts representing a growing coalition of research institutions, with the goal to further the effort of building such systems through a Web repository and other collaborative activities.

Features

• User-friendly
• Accepts a variety of video and audio formats
• Secure delivery of media content to CMS course sites
• No special software for media audiences required
• Content accessible through mobile devices for on-the-go learning
• Media owners and end-users can easily identify items in collections
• Generates HTML code for Web pages

Who is Eligible?

Northwestern faculty and staff wishing to use the system for research or instructional purposes may request a Media Space account.

How does it work?

Media Space converts video and audio content captured from many sources into particular digital formats allowing the material to be delivered over the Internet.

Once an account has been established, users may access the user interface and begin building Collections of video and audio resources. The media collections reside on a secure streaming server maintained centrally by the University, providing a clear and uniform avenue for media publishing.

Using Media Space requires a series of steps that include: establishing a Media Space account, selecting the media to share, organizing related-content into one or more "Collections”, and selecting the CMS course site where the collections will reside.

The Media Space audience is chosen by the instructor and may range from all the students in a particular NU class to researchers in a field, to the general public. The Media Space user must also decide what venue(s) to use for publishing the content.   Using the Course Management System as a venue has the advantage of automatically restricting an audience to a set group, important for situations in which there may be copyright concerns for the content.

More information on getting started, including how to add to Collections, embedding media into a Web page, software requirements, and intellectual property considerations, can be found in the Media Space How-to-Guide.