Arizona State University Ramps Up its Distance Learning with Multiple Purchases of Sonic Foundry's Mediasite Live

Business Wire, June 4, 2003

Business Editors/Education Writers/High-Tech Writers

Infocomm 2003

Booth #4043

ORLANDO, Fla.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--June 4, 2003

After Successful Trial with College of Engineering and Applied

Sciences, ASU Buys Additional Rich Media Web Presentation System to

Expand Offerings for Upcoming Fall Semester

Sonic Foundry(R) Inc. (Nasdaq:SOFO), a leading rich media solutions company, today announced Arizona State University is using its Mediasite Live(TM) rich media Web presentation system to capture and stream distance learning classes for the College of Engineering and Applied Sciences.

Following a positive experience with graduate engineering classes during the spring 2003 semester, the university purchased additional systems to integrate into its television studio classrooms for courses beginning this fall.

Arizona State University (ASU) began offering distance learning via television in 1959 and today has more than 165 online courses available through its Distance Learning and Technology division. Despite its long history in distance education, ASU felt burdened by all the labor-intensive, post-production work required of the video streaming systems it has used in the past. For the College of Engineering and Applied Sciences, the challenge of getting its courses "Web-ready" was particularly significant due to the complex graphics and simulations used by the professors.

After researching the marketplace for a new online learning solution, a team of evaluators from the school's Center for Professional Development and Distance Education, together with Distance Learning and Technology, selected Mediasite Live because it is the only product it evaluated that:

-- Does not require professors to modify their teaching style or

the tools they use;

-- Eliminates the need for costly and time-consuming post

production;

-- Integrates easily into their existing TV broadcast facilities;

and,

-- Provides high-quality video streams and graphics for the

online students.

"To have a product that can actually synchronize all the audio, video and supporting multimedia material is extremely important to us and a surprisingly novel concept for most vendors," said Ryan Steans, manager of distance learning programs with Arizona State University, Center for Professional Development and Distance Education. "It's exciting for us to turn around an entire class and get it on the Web instantaneously. Previously, for every one-hour class, we would have one-and-a-half hours of post-production work. MediaSite Live eliminates all of that. If we could use it for every class, we would."

Eight professors within the College of Engineering and Applied Sciences first began using Mediasite Live for the spring 2003 semester. All of the classes are graduate-level engineering courses with approximately 75 percent of the students enrolled as traditional classroom students and 25 percent who are distance learners. For the professors, Mediasite Live is completely transparent to what they do. No more having to pre-record classes. No restrictions to the materials they can use. Just show up and teach as usual.

The positive response from the engineering faculty, students and the multimedia professionals behind the scenes has led professors in other departments to sign up to use Mediasite Live in the fall. The highly versatile Mediasite Live captures virtually any type of presentation device in real time -- projectors, document cameras, graphics tablets, smart boards, even traditional chalk boards -- and synchronizes the content with the audio and video of the presenter and streams it live to the Web. The captured presentation also is immediately archived and made available for convenient on-demand playback to end-users' PCs.

"The market demand for distance education, driven by the growing number of professionals seeking to advance their careers with the convenience of accredited online learning, creates a number of challenges for higher education institutions," said James Dias, vice president of enterprise solutions, Sonic Foundry. "MediaSite Live enables them to meet these challenges because it eliminates all post-production work normally associated with publishing a course to the Web and does not interfere with the teaching process in any way."

Arizona State University is one of the premier public research universities in the nation with a student body of more than 57,000 undergraduate, graduate and professional students. In addition to the main campus in Tempe, the university has campuses in northwest Phoenix and Mesa. In downtown Phoenix, ASU's Extended Campus offers academic and professional certificate programs. For more information, visit http://www.asu.edu.

About Sonic Foundry(R), Inc.

Founded in 1991, Sonic Foundry (Nasdaq:SOFO) is a leading provider of rich media solutions for the enterprise. Its complete offering of tools, systems and services provides a single source for creating, managing, analyzing and enhancing media for government, business, and education. Sonic Foundry is based in Madison, Wis., with an office in Pittsburgh. For more information about Sonic Foundry, visit the company's Web site at www.sonicfoundry.com.