Modern teaching requires a rock-solid media platform — a service that reliably records and delivers instructional videos to your students.
And that's what Mediasite has become in the last three years, says Christy McLeod, an instructional designer in the College of Food, Agriculture and Environmental Sciences.
"The improvements to Mediasite since its early days at Ohio State have been tremendous. The extensive yet easy-to-use menu allows users to edit videos and captions, add interactive quizzes and polls, and easily update video titles and descriptions,” McLeod said. “I especially appreciate its seamless integration with Carmen(Canvas) and the ease of collaborating with colleagues through shared folders."
In the last two years, Learning Systems executed a service improvement plan to strategically enhance the tool, including:
- Building an automated high-quality captioning tool in house, saving time and money and improving accessibility
- Implementing an all-new upload and embed experience in Carmen, which improved the student viewing experience
- Advocating with the vendor for the creation of a new browser-based recorder, making recording more convenient than ever
- Turning on frequently requested features, including video assignments and grade passback to the LMS
Ohio State has had Mediasite as its enterprise video hosting platform since 2014. After a request for proposals in 2022, the university chose Mediasite again as it was the most cost-effective option, but feedback showed it could be better.
Survey data from spring 2026 show the user experience with Mediasite has improved for both content creators and students. The most celebrated improvement was the switch to high-quality automated captioning. The ease-of-use rating for this task improved from a 5.3 to 6.3 and creators shared this improvement has saved them significant time.
"Mediasite's automated captioning is the most accurate I have seen on any streaming platform, but it is also easy to edit and make sure they are perfect before I share my video,” said Byron Roush, director of instructional design in the College of Social Work.
“With Mediasite, I just need to click on Edit Captions, play my video and review the captions pop up on the screen. If there is anything I need to edit, I can just type it in. One of the trickiest edits to make with captions is adjusting the timing, but Mediasite shows those right under the video and you can drag and drop to adjust the timing and make it perfect."
Overall usability and satisfaction went up significantly from 2023 to 2026:
- The net promoter score, a common measure of satisfaction, improved 15.5 points from 8.7 to 24.7. Any score above 0 is considered good.
- The System Usability Score, an industry-standard for usability, increased from 65.7 to 70 for creators (both in the Good category) and from 71.1 to 79.2 for students, shifting from the Good to Excellent category.
- Among content creators who shared feedback in 2023, 74.1% reported satisfaction with the tool, with 37.9% indicating they are now extremely satisfied since the improvements were made.
Learning System’s project addressed major needs, with 77% of creators agreeing that Mediasite does what they need it to do up from 55% in a 2020 survey.
OTDI remains committed to continued improvement of Mediasite. Learning Systems is now moving into a new phase of the plan, with even more updates and changes coming soon.
If you'd like to share your experience with Mediasite or any of the university's enterprise teaching and learning tools, contact OTDI-LS-innovation@osu.edu.