Using video podcasts outside the classroom

Many institutions are creating both audio and video podcasts of classroom lectures. Here at the University of Delaware, we are using videos in many creative ways. We take the most common consulting questions and create videos that instruct users how to solve those problems. Our videos complement our web pages and show people exactly what they need to do. With rapid changes in we knew we needed to take a fresh look at how we kept our user community informed. The traditional methods generated a high volume of calls to our help desk and we hoped to provide an alternative to reduce it considerably. We organized a team of existing staff members and created our own video production unit. Our team consists of technical writers, videographers, and editors, all self-taught over the course of this project. Over the course of the year, we created podcasts that describe IT department services, promote IT facilities on campus, and build awareness about technology and computing issues via public service announcements. We will give an overview of our production process, how we have used videos up to this point, and ideas we have for the future.