Villanova University's College of Engineering Selects Sonic Foundry's Mediasite for Distance Education

Business Wire, Oct 20, 2004

DENVER -- Mediasite integrates with university's WebCT platform to create an enhanced rich media learning environment for graduate students of engineering

Sonic Foundry(R) Inc. (Nasdaq:SOFO), a leading rich media solutions company, today announced Villanova University's College of Engineering has purchased three of the company's Mediasite(TM) rich media presentation recorders to capture and stream courses for its graduate degree program. The recorded classes serve as an important adjunct to in-class learning and facilitate effective online learning for students in the distance education section.

Engineering courses, particularly at the graduate level, create unique challenges for institutions interested in offering distance education programs because of all the complex graphics and simulations used by the professors. As a result, technologies that might be effective in capturing and streaming PowerPoint(R) slides for a liberal arts course are ill-suited for the technical disciplines like engineering and healthcare where the content includes highly detailed imagery that is generated from a variety of devices.

Mediasite solves this problem through its unique dual-channel, real-time processing technology. The patent-pending VersaVisual(TM) technology enables the capture of multi-source, multi-format visual content from virtually any analog and digital source. Featuring the industry's fastest multi-channel encoding system, Mediasite greatly compresses workflow and easily handles complex engineering diagrams, maps, photos, detailed medical imagery, intricate drawings and other applications where visual clarity is critical. All of this is accomplished in real time and is completely transparent to the instructor.

"It's important for us as an institution to offer an optimal learning experience regardless of where the student is sitting when that learning occurs and Mediasite instantly creates an online mirror image of traditional class-based learning," said Sean O'Donnell, director of distance education for Villanova's College of Engineering. "Our professors really love it. To be honest, they were a little disheartened by our earlier distance education efforts because they couldn't use their computer images effectively. With Mediasite, that's no longer an issue. Now they can teach the way they want, using all the complex high-resolution images that are so essential to graduate level engineering courses."

In addition, by integrating the Mediasite recorders with its WebCT course management and academic enterprise system tools, Villanova's College of Engineering is able to provide synchronous and asynchronous learning modalities complete with real-time video streaming, live chat, bulletin board communications and the posting of notes and other materials to support the learning process. Students without broadband Internet access can download each class and watch "off-line" while traditional classroom-based students also can access the rich media archive of recorded classes to review complex concepts or to make-up a class. The WebCT portal interface also allows the College of Engineering to authenticate and track each student's viewing of the course materials.

"Villanova University's College of Engineering is the perfect example of a multi-unit Mediasite customer who generates a large amount of complex, rich media content and needs a product with Mediasite's unmatched capabilities in real-time capture and scalability," said James Dias, vice president of Sonic Foundry. "As the demand for Web-based distance education continues to grow exponentially, Mediasite provides a highly automated system that enables higher education institutions to quickly meet that demand head on without creating IT/AV headaches or interfering with the teaching process in any way."

About Sonic Foundry(R), Inc.

Founded in 1991, Sonic Foundry (NASDAQ:SOFO) is a provider of rich media communications technology for the enterprise. The company's high-performance rich media presentation systems are trusted by Fortune 500 companies, education institutions and government agencies for a variety of critical communication needs. Sonic Foundry is based in Madison, Wis. For more information about Sonic Foundry, visit the company's Web site at www.sonicfoundry.com.

Certain statements contained in this news release regarding matters that are not historical facts may be forward-looking statements. Because such forward-looking statements include risks and uncertainties, actual results may differ materially from those expressed in or implied by such forward-looking statements. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially include, but are not limited to, uncertainties pertaining to continued market acceptance for Sonic Foundry's products, its ability to succeed in capturing significant revenues from media services and/or systems, the effect of new competitors in its market, integration of acquired business and other risk factors identified from time to time in its filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.