How Maryville University saves 35% time creating video lectures

We spoke with Maryville’s Learning Design team, who told us how Maryville uses Synthesia to build learning content for their online tuition platform and what other plans they have in store to digitize campus life.

The Challenge:

Maryville University is among the leaders in expanding and diversifying online learning materials while preserving its high teaching standards. To maintain this quality, the team has chosen to use video as the primary format for its online lectures.

The challenge? Professors are often very busy to set aside multiple recording sessions for online content and Maryville also needed to augment their toolbelt for delivering updated content quickly.

To solve this issue, the team began working with an AI video provider, but ran into some limitations:

• The learning design team had limited accessibly for rendering videos, and the parameters around creating customized content 24/7 proved tricky to navigate.
• This meant many rounds of iterations (video content, pronunciation, etc.), which led to longer lead times for delivery.

We wanted to transition to a more flexible partner that would allow us to deliver learning video content faster. - Gabrielle Young, Executive Director, Strategic Marketing and Communications

The Solution:

Switching to Synthesia, Maryville University was able to cut down production time significantly.

Now the team is in control of the entire video creation process. From writing the script to creating the video content itself in Synthesia.

The team picks an avatar, adds the script and some diagrams or images to support the message – Done is the video lecture.

This is what the team values most:

• Ease of use: The platform is easy to use and includes all the necessary video editing features to create high-quality educational videos without any prior editing knowledge.
• Flexibility: Once created, a video can be easily updated at any time, without having to start from the beginning.
• Media library: Access to a wide range of stock image and video material that enables the creation of learning content relevant to 90+ academic programs.

Watch this cool video lecture the team created – an interactive lesson between a professor and an avatar 👇

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Synthesia allows us to produce all of our content in-house, eliminating previous delays. The team is very responsive and immediately addresses any feedback we have. - Gabrielle Young, Executive Director, Strategic Marketing and Communications

The Results:

Maryville University has been creating Synthesia videos for less than a year, but the team has come far:

• Content scaling: A total of 85 videos in Maryville’s online courses, in less than 8 months.
• Avatar assisted learning: 11 courses are already using AI avatars, from human resource management to digital leadership to healthcare compliance.
• Time savings: Using Synthesia, the learning design team is able to save 35% compared to the previous AI video creation process.

After piloting AI avatars, the team now plans to incorporate AI videos into its campus apps and integrate avatars into the live classroom experience. The team is convinced – AI video and education go well together.