The Provision of Lecture Capture System

The University of Birmingham uses the Panopto software tool to provide lecture capture in all teaching spaces, to provide video capture software for teaching events, and to provide video playback for students of teaching content.

The system is integrated to Canvas VLE and linked through in house developed code to the University's timetabling system, student records system, learner analytics system, and VLE Administration system.

During the last 12 months the coding has been significantly rewritten to work with the University's new timetabling system to ensure that lectures can be recorded and then automatically correctly located within Canvas.

StARS+ (Student Administration Refresh and Simplification+) is a University-wide programme to simplify,standardise and improve our student administration services, enabled by a replacement and upgrade of our student record system. Due to the ongoing complexity of the StARS+ programme, and that the project will affect transformational change across many key areas and include changes to a number of applications including those associated with Panopto, the University won't have the capacity to implement new systems and associated process and change during this time (now to 2025/6), should we choose to change supplier. This would also introduce substantial risk and additional training requirements during with the very real possibility of overloading programme teams. We need to be certain that University resources will be available to support the delivery of this work as required, and it would be important to align the development, change, and implementation road map of this project with other University and ITS projects through the normal prioritisation process. Therefore, we are looking to extend the current contract for a period of two years, up to 31/07/2026 (current contract expires in July 2024). The University plans to re-tender during this time.

Removing or replacing Panopto at this stage would adversely impact our immediate strategic goals, and would directly have a detrimental impact on the staff and student experience and would require significant time and staff resourcing.

The Business Owner will undertake an options re-appraisal and associated procurement process 18 months before the end of this two-year period in order to obtain the best future fit in terms of requirements and also value for money.