Panopto for Education

What do you like best about the product?

I really value how Panopto integrates with our VLE Brightspace, providing students with a seamless experience. It's great that they can access all their learning materials, like module books and recordings, in one place. I also appreciate the excellent support from Panopto's engineers, who are knowledgeable and always ready to help with any issues. The initial setup was smooth, and with Panopto's support, deploying the software using SCCM was straightforward once we had the right hardware. It's been impressive how well Panopto has worked for us over the past 10 years.

What do you dislike about the product?

I find it challenging that with Panopto, we have to rely on the platform itself for bulk changes to folders and permissions. It would be really useful to have options to make these changes in bulk or have them cascade from a parent folder. Additionally, when we want to delay content release by 48 hours for lecturers to make changes, it involves setting folders as not available, which Panopto currently has to do in bulk. Automation for these kinds of tasks, like using the API to change recording status after a set time, could make the process more seamless and less dependent on manual preparation.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

Panopto integrates with Brightspace, providing a seamless learning experience with access to all materials in one place. Their support team is exceptional, though I wish it allowed more automation for folder and content management to ease our preparation process.

What do you like best about the product?

I really like how easy it is to integrate Panopto with our existing platform, Blackboard. The full feature set is impressive, especially the ability to search within videos after they have been converted. It's really helpful that all audio gets converted to text. I also appreciate the analytics that provide deep insights into video usage and student engagement. The video submission tool is a great feature, allowing students to submit videos easily without requiring them to install additional software. Panopto doesn't contribute to our Blackboard storage, which is a big plus, and the web interface makes everything easier for students. The setup was pretty easy with LTI 1.3 integration, and it's scalable, so it fits well with our large number of lecturers and students. Scheduling additional meetings is straightforward, and students appreciate being able to review lectures afterwards.

What do you dislike about the product?

The only issue we currently have are the black bars which are shown when you integrate Panopto via LTI within an Ultra document, since for some lecturers it impacts the clean / aesthetic feel. Some of our lecturers prefer to use the embed function which minimizes some of the analytics that you can get from the video. It doesn't really impact the effective use of video, but some of our lecturers like a more clean layout, so they embed the video. By embedding the video, some LTI tracking capabilities are lost and it is difficult to identify which students watched the video, although you do still have analytics in terms of total view time, but those users show up as anonymous.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

I use Panopto for student engagement tracking, video storage with auto-archiving, and deep integrations like Blackboard. It gives us insights into video usage, lets students submit video assignments easily, and doesn't require extra software for recordings.

What do you like best about the product?

What I find most helpful about Panopto is how seamlessly it integrates with both Zoom and Blackboard. I also really value being able to add quizzes directly within videos, since it makes recorded content more interactive and creates additional opportunities for student engagement and assessment.

What do you dislike about the product?

One downside is the inability to bulk download recordings. When managing a large number of recordings, having to download them individually can be time-consuming and inefficient. A bulk download option would be especially helpful for archiving, migrating, or backing up recordings.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

Panopto helps solve the storage limitations of Blackboard by providing a dedicated platform for storing and managing video content. This keeps large video files from taking up valuable Blackboard storage while still allowing faculty and students to access recordings seamlessly within their courses. It also provides a more centralized and organized way to manage video content across courses.

What do you like best about the product?

I like Panopto's powerful video search feature, which makes it easier to find recordings using search. The initial setup was smooth.

What do you dislike about the product?

I think Panopto could benefit from having a more intuitive interface.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

Panopto makes finding video recordings easier with its powerful search, addressing my challenges with video discovery.

What do you like best about the product?

I enjoy how easy it is to have our lectures automatically upload to the platform after being recorded. It integrates easily with the systems we utilize for lectures and they process very quickly so we can get the added to our other applications for students to access in a timely manner. The automatic transcriptions feature is also incredibly helpful and incredibly easy to add to videos with just the click of a button. Our representative is also incredibly helpful and reaches out consistently, but not too much, to ensure our needs are being met. I believe we get out of Panopto everything that we pay for and it's well worth it to be able to easily manage our lectures.

What do you dislike about the product?

Overall, I don't believe there's many downsides to Panopto. The only thing that we run into occasionally is that it can take some time for videos to process especially if they are longer in length. But that is to be expected. It seems to be at random when recordings take longer to process and sometimes it takes a while for the auto transcriptions to populate.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

Panopto helped us by giving us a platform to organize and store all of our lectures. We can easily go back to old recordings whenever we need and they make it very easy to do so. Being able to automatically transcribe videos and add sections makes our jobs incredibly easy while also adding accessibility to those that may need it.