Lecture Capture +. (Project Post)

Prior to the beginning of the ALT module I was organised, energised and ready for what the module had in store. Sadly in the early weeks of the module my Father passed away and so it took my organisation, energy and readiness and mashed it up quite substantially. I now ready myself for the remainder of the project with a view to making it a success. My project area of ‘Lecture Capture’ is one that I have explored for a number of years. After the hurdles of getting the technology to work in a productive way I then found that from a pedagogic standpoint that the long lecture captures were of little use and few if any students used them as part of their educational journey. So I now ask the question, How much pedagogic value does straight lecture capture give the educator and the learner?. Owston, Lupshenyuk & Wideman (2011) discuss the issue of whether an institution is wise to invest in technology, training and support of its staff to provide this facility. They conclude that low achievers are more likely to interact and benefit from this facility whilst high achievers tend to fast forward and view certain sections only once and therefore is likely to benefit low achievers more.  Also in Stasko and Caron (2010), cited in Purcel and Hong-Ning (2011), the average time spent by a student watching a recorded lecture is 4 minutes. I sense there is more we can do to enhance the online offer to students to make educators material more engaging. I recently took part in a webinar as part of a JISC funded project REC:all, The Pedagogy Framework (www.rec:all.info). Young (2012) uses Bloom’s Taxonomy to describe how as educators we can progress up the Taxonomy triangle to words such as apply, analyse, evaluate and create rather than just playing around at the bottom of the triangle by remembering and understanding which is what simple lecture capture is actually doing. Young (2012) also says ‘The project is looking towards how we can exploit lecture capture to see if we can think more deeply about pedagogical issues and practices we can adopt using these systems’ this is further communicated by the use of the word ‘augmenting’ which means make something greater by adding to it.

Owston, R., Lupshenyuk, D., & Widemann, H. (2011) Lecture Capture in Large Undergraduate Classes: What is the Impact on the Teaching and Learning Environment? Institute for Research on Learning Technologies, York University, Toronto, Canada.

Moes, S., Young, C. (2012) The Pedagogy Framework. http://www.rec-all.info/events/rec-all-webinar-the-pedagogy-framework

Pursel, B. & Hong-Ning, F. (2011) Lecture Capture: Current Research and Future Directions, The Schreyer Institute for Teaching Excellence. [See also for an on-line version: http://www.psu.edu/dept/site/pursel_lecture_capture_2012v1.pdf    last accessed 25 October 2012]