With an increasing number of online classes at the University of Iowa, the university is ending its license with Kaltura, the media hub used since 2017, and will implement UICapture, provided by online video company Panopto.

The UI has primarily face-to-face instruction, excluding classes with enrollments of more than 150 students, which are online.

Kaltura has been the source that helps students, employees, and staff upload media, edit videos in an online space, David Long, associate director of enterprise instructional technology, wrote in an email to The Daily Iowan.

He wrote that it seemed like the right choice to use Kaltura in 2017.

“When we first embarked on the Kaltura journey in 2017, it made sense for several reasons: feature disparity between Panopto and Kaltura, as well as the majority of Big Ten and Unizin institutions being on Kaltura,” Long wrote.

Unizin is a nonprofit that proposes enhancements in digital content for higher learning.

Long wrote the adoption rate of using UICapture has increased during the pandemic.

“In 2020, about 7,000 people uploaded content, with about 67,000 hours of videos viewed,” he wrote.

Long wrote that Kaltura has been unreliable and went down across the university in August 2020. He wrote that if the site would load, but students and instructors weren’t able to view videos or upload new videos, sometimes for more than an hour in class.

“Other times people would upload videos and it would take an extended amount of time for the videos to be processed and viewable online,” Long wrote.

Long wrote that UICapture can also be used for non-academic purposes, meaning that anyone at the UI can log in with their HawkID or share publicly, and allows instructors to capture lecture videos that can be viewed later.

Panopto, the host for UICapture, was founded in 2007, and can also be used for business and education purposes.

Its software technology is currently used in 22 out of the 25 top universities across the world, according to the Panopto website.

Dave Neway, Panopto vice president of marketing, wrote in an email to the DI that Panopto complements live and in-person lectures with its technology to record, transcribe, and make searchable all aspects of the video for later use

Panopto software is known to be asynchronous, which allows students to study and learn at their own pace, Neway wrote. Students can rewatch pre-recorded lectures at any time to catch up or fill in on material.

“Panopto also helps faculty automatically organize their class recordings so that students can collaborate. More than just a recording software,” Neway wrote.