Dive Brief:
- More than 100 institutions are considering replicating Penn State’s One Button Studio, which opened in 2010 to help faculty and students easily record video.
- The studio lights and recording equipment turn on when users insert a thumb drive and turn off when it is removed, with recording starting and stopping with the press of a single button.
- At Penn State, the number of users creating video on campus has gone from 80 per year in the old studios to up to 4,500 per semester in the One Button Studio.
Dive Insight:
Penn State has expanded its One Button concept from a single studio to 18 across its campus. Ohio State, the University of Nebraska, and Notre Dame have already replicated the concept with schools, libraries, and other institutions considering doing the same. Automating production and giving users the ability to simply walk away with a saved, compressed video file has certainly increased the volume of video exchanged at Penn State and other institutions. That is only success in one section of a broader area, however. Studio users improve their on-camera comfort but walk away from the experience without very little additional video production literacy. In an increasingly digital world, even more value will come with learning those additional skills.