Video Production for Online MsC Courses
Project info
Year: 2024–2025
Tools: Jira, Adobe Premiere Pro, Figma, PowerPoint
For: St Mary's University
Skills: Project management, Video production and editing, Stakeholder management, Technical writing, Graphic design
About this project
St Mary’s runs several fully online Master’s programmes. They are very successful, largely because of the high-quality content delivered in a highly flexible structure. Our video content is indispensable in the course design. These videos give our students a critical human touchpoint in what can be an isolating learning environment.
Unfortunately, the video development team has been struggling with production bottlenecks, leading to missed deadlines that hold up the rest of the course production.
I was brought in to lead the St Mary’s video production. Working with content developers, SMEs, presenters, and AV team members, I streamlined the process to help us meet deadlines and improve video quality. This included:
- Stakeholder management to identify key problems in our model
- Holding weekly stand-ups to improve communication and keep everyone on the same page
- Managing the project using Jira, to keep track of video, assign deadlines, and gather all links in one central place
- Writing procedure documents and style guides to keep the quality consistent
- Creating branded PowerPoint templates
- Performing quality checks and providing feedback to coach SMEs to deliver engaging videos
This has greatly sped up our video editing time from 4+ hours to just 30 minutes per video. Shifting more responsibility to the SMEs has now enabled them to be more independent in video content. We find that the final outputs are more creative and rigorous, now that the roles are more clearly defined.
What's next?
Moving forward, we’re exploring AI for video production. While we’re cautiously optimistic about AI voiceover and podcast, we’re holding off on using AI avatars for now. Authenticity and trust in the instructor are important for the student experience, but we’ll continue to asses new tools as they come – always putting the pedagogy first.
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