When combined, Zoom and Panopto's virtual communication technology can help students and teachers capture, annotate, and review lectures.

Although most K-12 and university classrooms in America will open for in-person learning this fall, colleges continue to expand their adoption of and commitment to virtual learning.

Zoom and Panopto are capitalizing on that interest and momentum. The popular virtual communication tech companies worked together to create a stacked integration of their platforms. The integration launched in late 2019, just months ahead of the pandemic's emergence in the US.

Zoom is ideal for synchronous, or real-time, experiences. Panopto is optimized for asynchronous experiences. In other words, you can access content in Panopto on your own schedule.

Stacked together, Zoom allows teachers and students to have live, real-time engagement. Then those experiences are stored in Panopto. That platform allows users to add additional media, like quizzes or captions. Panopto also allows you to share recordings with authenticated users without creating passwords. And it automatically shares recordings to learning management or content management systems. 

Major schools adopting an integrated tech approach

Zoom and Panopto recently shared with ZDNet how the University of Notre Dame uses the stacked platforms. 

Mike Rich, Panopto

The Indiana-based private Catholic university, which has about 13,000 students and nearly 1,500 faculty members, had used Zoom and Panopto before the pandemic. 

Notre Dame primarily used Zoom for video conferencing and Panopto to record scheduled classroom sessions. In the fall of 2020, the university integrated the two platforms and expanded their on-campus use. Notre Dame upgraded 150 classrooms to "connected learning spaces" by adding cameras, microphones, and audio equipment.

"In the case of Notre Dame, they set up the integration such that the recordings from Zoom linked directly into Panopto," said Mike Rich, Panopto's vice president of strategic alliances and business development. 

Once they were able to [integrate Zoom and Panopto], you now have one seamless repository that was able to capture everything that took place virtually and all of the stuff that took place physically, and that really has transformed their operations and the learning experience for these students.

Johann Zimmern, Zoom's global education marketing lead, said, "What we now see is universities preparing for a future that has to provide a flexible learning modality for students who demand it." 

Zimmern said other big-name schools