Case Study: St. Mary’s University achieves campus-wide adoption and improved student engagement with Panopto

How this university evaluated the 6 most prominent video management providers and selected Panopto in a thorough tender process

St. Mary’s University, a 170‑year institution educating about 6,000 students, set out in 2019 to adopt campus‑wide lecture capture. A working group of academics, technical staff and the Student Union defined strict requirements: an intuitive, low‑literacy workflow that wouldn’t compromise functionality, hardware‑agnostic operation for varied AV and intermittent connectivity, and strong post‑purchase support. To evaluate vendors fairly they ran hands‑on two‑week trials and shortlisted providers based on usability and service.

After trials and interviews St. Mary’s selected Panopto and launched a pilot in January 2020, integrating it with Moodle and Zoom. Panopto’s support, captions, analytics and easy workflows drove quick adoption; lecturers produced short‑form content, then full lectures, and student engagement—especially around exam revision—increased. When lockdowns began in March 2020 the university scaled training and use rapidly; faculties, Finance and Marketing migrated content to Panopto, improving accessibility, retention (notably for 53% commuter students) and creating a growing, centrally managed video library.

St. Mary’s University

Bing Choong

Head of Technology Enhanced Learning