WALLINGFORD, Conn. – September 16, 2008- VBrick Systems, Inc., the world leader in digital video appliances and solutions, today announced that Bryant University is leveraging VBrick’s video-on-demand and IP television expertise to extend learning beyond the classroom walls by providing faculty and students on-demand access to hundreds of educational videos ranging from politics to philosophy. 

“In 2006, we purchased a large number of videos for our professors to use as content for their lectures,” said Dan Greene, media production specialist at Bryant University. “Unfortunately, we lacked an efficient way of making the videos easily available and feared our investment would be under-utilized. That’s when VBrick stepped in. Our goal was to have an efficient way to view and select videos for the classroom.  VBrick made it easy for Bryant University to upload the initial collection of 100 videos with minimal manual involvement.”

 According to Greene, “In the past, if a professor heard of a video they thought might be interesting for their class, they’d have to physically go to the library, get the video, and bring it back home to watch it. If they discovered it wasn’t as good as they’d hoped, they’d have to repeat that process over and over again. But now, they can log into one location from anywhere on campus and access several hundred videos at once. It saves a lot of time and makes it easier for them to discover videos they didn’t know existed.”

Once the videos were uploaded, the school’s library staff was able to use VBrick’s file management tools to create a customized organizational scheme for the videos that matched the library’s cataloging system.  This enables members of the school community to access the video library using their regular network passwords. Initially the video library was made available only to the academic buildings on campus, but eventually it was expanded to all dorms as well.

In addition to managing library content, Bryant University also uses the technology to distribute four cable channels – Discover, History, Fox News and CNN, as well as broadcast campus special events such as sports games and VIP visits–