New Content Management System for Higher Education Combines Lecture Capture and Active Learning with Smarter Video Management to Improve Outcomes

WASHINGTON, Oct. 25, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Higher education's leading video platform, Echo360, announced today the launch of a new video content management system (CMS) for higher education. Designed to reflect the multiplicity of video needs on campus, from lecture capture to screencasting, flipped classrooms to video libraries, Echo360's CMS is integrated into a single, smart video platform that works the way faculty and students do and integrates tightly with existing systems, including the campus-wide LMS.

Colleges and universities are creating, organizing, and sharing unprecedented amounts of video content. But, to meet the needs of their diverse stakeholders, institutions are often forced to use complex video tools designed for media companies and for-profit corporations rather than teaching and learning - resulting in a challenging user experience designed for passive video consumption.

Building on the company's leadership in lecture capture, Echo360's new CMS incorporates essential elements from popular consumer video platforms - and works seamlessly with Echo360's video recording and active learning capabilities to foster active, engaged, and personalized learning and provide new types of learning data that can be used to improve student outcomes.

"At Echo360 we are continuously working to build a better video platform for everyone in higher education by making it easier for students, faculty, and administrators to create, access, and share video," said Bill Holding, Executive Vice President of Product at Echo360. "Extending the functionality of our CMS to meet the needs of video users and creators campus-wide is another step towards offering a smarter, more complete platform that provides higher education institutions with a unique, industry-leading combination of best in class video, active learning tools that measurably improve learning outcomes, and a single, specialized resource for all their video content management needs."

Echo360's new video CMS incorporates features that ensure alignment with existing educator and administrator workflows, enabling faculty and staff to more easily create and share instructional video content with students, colleagues, and, if desired, the general public. These content creation tools can be accessed directly or through a linked icon in the LMS – anytime, from any laptop, tablet, or mobile device.

Echo360 is unique among video platforms in that it enables administrators to map usage to educational roles such as student, instructor, and administrator, as well as academic structures including courses and sections. With the coming "Intelligent Permissions" feature, administrators will have the ability to further streamline the video sharing process by creating groups to automatically receive video content based upon their role or membership in the system. Educators using the platform will, for example, be able to create libraries of study aids - and automatically share them with students in a given department or set of classes with a single mouse click.

LMS integration with the new authoring tool is now available on the Echo360 platform. Other features, such as "Intelligent Permissions," will be launched in the coming months.

About Echo360: Echo360 believes that improved outcomes start with great moments in the classroom. Developed by educators, Echo360 helps instructors capture and extend those moments to improve student engagement before, during, and after class. Through our video and engagement platform, students have 24/7 access to classroom discussion, presentation materials, and the lecture itself. We generate data that helps instructors and institutions identify problems early and take action. Today, Echo360 technologies are used by over 3M students in 11,000 classrooms at 750 institutions across 30 countries. Echo360 is backed by Revolution Growth led by Steve Case, Ted Leonsis, and Donn Davis.

SOURCE Echo360