Daniela Plana, Teaching Fellow in Chemistry, Keele University
The term “lecture capture technology” has been used in the literature to encompass a range of different technologies, ranging from pre-recording lectures in a separate environment to the recording of live lectures and their later distribution to students.[1-4] At Keele Playback is currently used, which allows for the audio (mainly the lecturer) and the screen to be recorded (both through projection from a computer or using a visualiser).Lecture capture is a particularly inclusive tool, as it not only especially supports students who have genuine reasons for missing sessions (illness, caring responsibilities, work), but also students learning in a language that is not their own.[1, 5] The ability to re-live a lecture, to pause it and go at their own speed, as well as possibly having captions added, is incredibly helpful for learners that are not studying in their native tongue. For many of the same factors, it is also helpful for students with particular learning disabilities. Given Keele's strategic focus on both International Attainment Gap and Social Inclusion, it seems quite relevant to embrace a tool that quite easily can serve both aims effectively.
Lecture capture generates an extensive collection of learning materials. Although it has become commonplace, both at Keele and within the HE sector, there are fewer examples of lecture recordings being edited to create shorter clips.[6] Here we describe the editing of lecture recordings to provide short resources which can be used in a ‘flipped classroom’ approach or as revision resources. Through a Teaching Innovation Project, we (Laura Hancock, Graeme Jones and I) were able to partner with students who edited lecture capture recordings and produced “Lecture Highlights”. Details on the project can be found here and a report will be available in due course. Working with students to produce the resources provided additional value, as they said themselves “… lecturers can make what you think… I want a little bit more… you can get that if you have a student doing it, I think”. It allowed the students to focus on the key elements of the relevant lectures, which they considered important or particularly difficult.
“Lecture Highlights” are resources made from edited recordings from lecture capture, focusing on a key concept from a lecture. Each resource has a clear title, concise one sentence summary and at the end a handful of bullet points answering the statement “you should now be able to…” Additionally, they are fully captioned and have accompanying edited lecture notes for students to use whilst they watch. They are not necessarily of the polished quality of a standalone screencast, but as such require significantly less time and effort to produce.
Camtasia was used during the project, but any video editing software could be equally useful. Technically, the most difficult issue was the captioning of the Lecture Highlights; although various speech-to-text programmes were trialled, there were issues with the quality of the audio and the subject-specific terminology, which required significant input and on occasion full transcriptions. We initially included captioning, based on feedback from international students who had engaged with existing resources, such as screencasts. The effort was definitely worth it, as a large majority of the students who have used the resources have said they found the captions useful, many explaining that it made understanding easier, but also citing a range of other uses such as enabling note-taking, that they “can pause and read them”, for “clear understanding of terminology” or when “I couldn’t have the volume on”.
Student feedback has been generally positive, describing Lecture Highlights as “the vital information of the lecture but extracted and shortened for a quick review when you need to be reminded of key concepts”, mentioning that they are “concise and easy to understand” and saying that they are “Good because it is easier to find the info you need than Playback and easier to understand than just lecture notes.”
- Newton, G., et al., Use of Lecture Capture in Higher Education - Lessons from the Trenches. TechTrends, 2014. 58(2): p. 32-45.
- Witton, G., The value of capture: Taking an alternative approach to using lecture capture technologies for increased impact on student learning and engagement. British Journal of Educational Technology, 2017. 48(4): p. 1010-1019.
- Leadbeater, W., et al., Evaluating the use and impact of lecture recording in undergraduates: Evidence for distinct approaches by different groups of students. Computers & Education, 2013. 61: p. 185-192.
- Groen, J.F., B. Quigley, and Y. Herry, Examining the Use of Lecture Capture Technology: Implications for Teaching and Learning. The Canadian Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, 2016. 7(1).
- Shaw, G.P. and D. Molnar, Non-native english language speakers benefit most from the use of lecture capture in medical school. Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Education, 2011. 39(6): p. 416-420.
- Ferriday, R., Innovative lecture capture. Proceedings of INTED2015 Conference 2nd-4th March 2015, 2015. Madrid: p. 0657–0661.
- We thank Sam Goodwin and Asma Kabiri for their amazing work on producing Lecture Highlights.
Lecture Highlights: repurposing of lecture capture to focus on essential concepts by Daniela Plana, Teaching Fellow in Chemistry, Keele University is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
