San Antonio College Uses Mediasite Webcasting Platform for Online Training

MADISON, Wis., May 31, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Sonic Foundry, Inc. (NASDAQ: SOFO), the trusted market leader for lecture capture, enterprise and event webcasting, today announced that its Mediasite webcasting platform is used by San Antonio College, part of one of the largest community college systems in the United States, Alamo Colleges, to train teachers and call center agents more efficiently.

San Antonio College, which currently has an enrollment of 26,000 students, is the largest single-campus community college in Texas and one of the largest in the United States. After years of doing one-time teacher trainings on how to use different types of technology, Mona Aldana-Ramirez, director of retention support services for the college, sought to create an online, searchable video library of the courses. Mediasite was the answer, and Alamo Colleges now has over 60 Mediasite Recorders.  

"We'd bring teachers in one Saturday a month to train and it was a lot of information. They would leave here and they had that feeling of 'Wow, how are we going to remember this information?'" Aldana-Ramirez said. "We wanted to capture training with Mediasite and give teachers the ability to go back and review that training on their own. I haven't stopped singing Mediasite's praises since. Mediasite allows me to be many different places at once. It has helped us tremendously on the operation side of the college to be able to train our people more efficiently without me having to go face to face."

Aldana-Ramirez purchased Mediasite with an emergent technology grant to train science teachers. Now, when she trains teachers, she can give them the link to the archived Mediasite webcast that they can review on-demand at any time. With the training available via Mediasite, each person could watch the webcast at his or her own time and pace, and get up to speed more quickly with less oversight from training staff.

The college also uses Mediasite to train call center agents.

"With the downturn of the economy and a hiring freeze, the college had to figure out how to serve its booming enrollment. Mediasite allows us to create easy to follow training modules as well as provide employees with the option for retraining online," Aldana-Ramirez said. "The college is able to save precious resources by creating one training session and making it available on-demand for review at any time. That time and money saved can be spent on the most important aspect of the school – the students."

Before Mediasite, students would call and receive recorded messages with long waits for help, so the college created a call intercept center and trained agents via online training webcasts on how to answer frequently asked questions and route them to the appropriate department.

Aldana-Ramirez is also working on using Mediasite for lecture capture throughout the disciplines, and for faculty advising. Through on-demand Mediasite webcasts, the college will certify every faculty member on campus to help the students enroll in classes. Faculty will all watch small training modules on their own time.

"San Antonio College is an excellent example of how Mediasite creates tremendous efficiencies by allowing you to save time and money by creating one training session that can bridge time and distance," said Gary Weis, Sonic Foundry chief executive officer. "Sonic Foundry is pleased to partner with San Antonio College as they explore unique ways to use the webcasting platform both inside and outside of the classroom."

The college recently won a Rich Media Impact Award in the Rapid ROI category for achieving a measurable ROI in its training initiative.

Trusted by more than 1000 colleges and universities, the patented Mediasite webcasting and video content management system quickly and cost-effectively automates the capture, management, delivery and search of live and on-demand streaming videos and rich media presentations that combine video with slides.

About San Antonio College
San Antonio College, part of Alamo Colleges, in Texas is a public community college that provides high quality general education, liberal arts and sciences, career education, continuing education and developmental education. It is the largest single-campus community college in Texas and one of the largest in the United States.

About Sonic Foundry®, Inc.
Sonic Foundry (NASDAQ: SOFO, www.sonicfoundry.com) is the trusted market leader for enterprise webcasting and lecture capture, providing video communication solutions for education, business and government. Powered by the patented Mediasite webcasting platform and Mediasite Events group, the company empowers people to transform the way they communicate online, using video webcasts to bridge time and distance, accelerate research and improve performance. Product and service names mentioned herein are the trademarks of Sonic Foundry, Inc. or their respective owners.

Certain statements contained in this news release regarding matters that are not historical facts may be forward-looking statements. Because such forward-looking statements include risks and uncertainties, actual results may differ materially from those expressed in or implied by such forward-looking statements. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially include, but are not limited to, uncertainties pertaining to continued market acceptance for Sonic Foundry's products, its ability to succeed in capturing significant revenues from media services and/or systems, the effect of new competitors in its market, integration of acquired business and other risk factors identified from time to time in its filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

SOURCE Sonic Foundry, Inc.