As summer is quickly coming to an end, Lifesize and Brock University are preparing for a Fall Term filled with video calls by announcing new updates to the video-conferencing application.

Since the University’s operational changes on March 13, the majority of staff and faculty moved to home offices, while students transitioned to learning in virtual classrooms. To stay connected and move forward with work and school, one of Brock’s greatest tool has been video calls.

Lifesize in particular has played a major role in being able to seamlessly work, teach and learn from home. The tool is being used for online classes, research, department meetings, athletic team workout sessions and virtual coffee breaks.

With the Fall Term quickly approaching, Lifesize has now announced new updates to the application.

The meeting capacity has been updated from 100 participants to 500 participants per meeting. Additionally, the live-streaming capacity has been upgraded to 10,000 participants per event.

To learn more about Lifesize and its available features, Lifesize offers end-user training, such as ‘Virtual Classrooms for Paid Account Users,’ and ‘Lifesize: What’s New.’ All of their programs can be accessed through the Lifesize University website.

Lifesize also provides additional resources, which can be found on the main Lifesize website.

To showcase just how much the University has relied on the video conferencing tool, Jon Winterbottom, Video Conferencing Technologist, Client Services, shared the following key Lifesize statistics:

• Since March, Brock has had 86,864 calls and almost 4,000,000 minutes of meetings. This translates to exactly 65,231 hours, which is the equivalent of about seven and ah alf years in less than six months.
• Brock’s Lifesize usage increased by almost 650 per cent from February to March.
• In April, Lifesize usage increased by 1,000 per cent compared to the pre-COVID usage in February.
• Before March, Brock was hosting an average of 2,000 calls per month. Within a matter of weeks after the operational changes in March, Brock was hosting more than 20,000 calls.

These graphs illustrate the University’s huge increase in LIfesize usage in terms of minutes and numbers of calls per day.