Press release

The University of Liège is the first Belgian university to implement UniCast, a completely automated audio & video system for podcasting classes.

UniCast captures and broadcasts classes in situ from the recording and processing stages up to circulation. It is very  user-friendly both for the teacher (who only needs enter his/her identification and log in before the system starts recording) and the student. Integrated into the student portal myULg, Unicast allows students to download  classes on their PCs (in high quality streaming) or  iPod-like (in video podcasting) just a few minutes after they have  ended.   

This innovative system has been conceived as a learning and remedial help tool for students, permitting them to go back over a point they have not fully grasped or screen a class they were not able to attend (due to illness, placement, etc.).

The first classroom will be operational by the end of September with four others available by the end of the year. Each Faculty and School will at least have one classroom linked to Unicast sometime during the course of the 2009-2010 academic year.  This initial  implementation stage, which represents a  250 000 € investment, has been made possible thanks to the financial support of the Walloon Region. 

Unicast is the most ambitious podcasting experience to date in a Belgian University. It took 18 months for the IT department of the University of Liège (SeGI) to research and develop the product in partnership with Apple Belgium. 

A digital university

Unicast is the latest addition to the cutting-edge digital services available to ULg students. With 20,000 high speed connection points, ULg has indeed one of the largest corporate networks in Wallonia.  Its more than 800 active WiFi terminals means that you can connect up from any ULg building. MyULg portal is the unmissable platform linking students with the university. MyULg accompanies the student throughout his/her university career: it serves as self-service administrative helpdesk, electronic notice board, and central access point to online resources.  The following figures bear witness to its success with sudents. Over the last twelve months, it was accessed by 90% of students who visited 120 million pages, i.e. slightly more than 325,000 a day.

UniCast will strengthen the role played by myULg in  the day-to-day life of ULg students.