How Asia Pacific University Supports 20,000 Students with Video Lessons – in 30 Minutes Per Video

Summary

Jonathan Kovilpillai from Asia Pacific University (APU), a private university in Malaysia with approximately 20,000 students and 400 lecturers, talks to Pictory about facing a growing demand for digital learning content across faculties.

Video production for teaching and instructional content took a minimum of three days per 3–5 minute video, often stretching to weeks due to scripting, editing, and SME review cycles. Within weeks of starting their use of Pictory, lecturers were creating instructional videos in under 30 minutes with minimal training.

The shift allowed APU’s Digital Learning Hub to support more faculties without increasing headcount, reduced production bottlenecks, and enabled large-scale student onboarding initiatives — including a 20,000-student rollout of a new online exam system — with no operational disruption.

The Challenge

The Digital Learning Hub at APU wanted to enable lecturers to become self-sufficient instructional designers. However, producing even short teaching videos was resource-intensive.

Time was the primary constraint. A single 3-5 minute video used to take from 3 days up to several weeks.

With 400 lecturers and a small support team, delays were inevitable — especially during new program launches, and faculty were already stretched thin across teaching, grading, research, and mentoring.

Choosing and Implementing Pictory

APU tried multiple AI video tools, but Pictory stood out for two reasons:

1. Flexibility
2. Speed to first usable video

As Jonathan explained:

“What I really liked is that if you’re in a hurry, you can make a video in fifteen minutes and be done with it. But if you want to take more time and modify it—make stylistic upgrades—Pictory allows deeper editing without forcing complexity on everyone.”

Jonathan’s team rolled out bi-weekly internal “Master Faster” sessions with small groups of lecturers, during which faculty followed along with a live demo and created their first video within 15 minutes. With that foundation in place, the rest of the sessions centered around advanced Pictory features that really allowed the lecturers to create powerful videos.

“Training lecturers on Pictory was more than extremely easy”, laughed Jonathan.

Results

1. Production Speed

Before Pictory, producing a 3–5 minute instructional video required a minimum of 72 hours. In many cases, especially when multiple review cycles were involved, production stretched into weeks.

After adoption, lecturers could produce a comparable video in approximately 30 minutes.

This represents a time reduction of more than 90%.

2. Lecturer Time Reallocated to Higher-Value Work

The primary benefit of this speed was what it enabled for lecturers. By compressing video production from days to minutes, APU effectively returned dozens of hours per video back to faculty.

As Jonathan explained:

“A teachers’ job is to teach. And that doesn’t mean just going into class and delivering a lecture. Now, our teachers can spend their time on research, grading, and mentoring their students. All things that have more value than sitting in front of a computer trying to make a video for 72 hours.”

3. 20,000 Students Trained on a New Exam System — Without Disruption

One of the most operationally significant use cases came when APU needed to onboard their 20,000 students onto a new Safe Exam Browser platform. 

The stakes were high. Any confusion could disrupt live exams.

Using Pictory, the team produced a step-by-step instructional video explaining:

• Installation process

• System requirements

• What to expect during exams

The outcome:

“There were no hiccups. Everybody managed to watch the video and know what to do. They downloaded it, they installed it — it worked, and since it worked, I can say the videos were successful”

For a university operating at that scale, “no hiccups” during a system-wide exam transition is a significant operational result.

Conclusion

For APU, the value of implementing Pictory has been measurable, repeatable, and visible to leadership.

As Jonathan explained:

“Every year when I go back to management for renewal, I don’t have to defend the tool — I get to show them what more we can do with it now. It hasn’t stood still. It keeps getting better, and that makes the investment easier to justify.”

For organizations facing rising content demand without rising headcount, the lesson is straightforward:

When video production drops from days to minutes, faculty aren’t stuck editing content - they’re back to teaching, mentoring, and guiding students where they make the greatest difference.