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This is a pretty standard critique. Reasons for lecture capture from my readings on class podcasts: Accessibility (physical, sensory, and learning disability), time shifting (TiVo), exam review, increased student satisfaction, ESL students, hybrid learning, and student feedback (on presentations). I could probably list several more. Smithers doesn't really address these kinds of uses. He also mentions that preparing short videos to augment classroom materials is a worthwhile effort, and we'd get desktop capture along with the system that we'd purchase.

When I first started thinking about lecture capture, what this article is saying pretty much summed up my position. Lectures represent poor instruction, and all lecture capture does is perpetuate that. I've come to have a more nuanced perspective on this issue than this author seems to have. First, there are certain realities we have to deal with. Large-enrollment courses and large lecture halls aren't going away anytime soon. In fact, they're only going to get more common as higher educational institutions try to operate more efficiently. Given this, as educational technologists, we need to look into technologies which provide the best teaching and learning experience with this contraint. Clickers are a good example of encouraging student engagement in large lecture halls. Lecture capture can improve this situation in a number of ways. If a student falls behind and is not able to ask questions due to the sheer size of a section, they can review the lecture later and engage with peers using the collaboration features of most lecture capture systems. Faculty can use lecture capture to create supplementary materials to supplement their instruction and minimize rote lecture, which may open an opportunity for incorporating critical dialogue in class. There are many other ways to use lecture capture to address the difficult teaching challenge of large lectures. Second, one situation that came up numerous times in my focus groups was that lecture captures helped students particularly in courses where the content was particularly challenging or informationally dense. No matter how good an instructor is, there are times that information presented in a lecture needs to be reviewed, and the presence of a lecture capture system provides that capability. Good systems, like the ones we're looking at, capture multiple sources like slides and document cameras, do OCR to make content searchable, etc., so review is a fairly rich experience.

(continued.. Diigo cut off my comment) Third, another affordance good lecture capture systems offer is collaboration. Reviewing a lecture capture is not a one-way consumption of a capture, but rather a place for contextual discussion of course materials with peers, or a place for students to ask targeted questions regarding a particularly difficult section of a lecture. Given that this discussion is contextual, it's often far more useful than an LMS discussion area. Finally, this technology aids teaching by offering instructors the ability to more easily see where students are having problems (via observing what sections they are reviewing the most or where they have the most questions) so they can address this in class. There's more value in lecture capture beyond what I've suggested here, such as in supporting distance or hybrid instruction (another growing need at this institution). Perhaps the problem is in the name 'lecture capture', as this doesn't really encapsulate much of what I just described. And there's definitely a faculty training need created here, in order to help develop pedagogies to properly leverage this technology and not just perpetuate bad teaching. But I think that's the case with any technologies we introduce. In short, this article provides a very one-dimensional view of lecture capture, and is probably based on observations of a small handful of poor uses. I think we can do better, and I am much more hopeful about this technology.

I think the original author would argue that the points you bring up would be better suited by series of short desktop recordings. It is a better way to present informationally dense materials. Students can collaborate around the desktop recording as much as a recorded lecture, and analytics on desktop recordings can reveal areas where students are struggling just as well as a recorded lecture. To the first point of classrooms getting larger - maybe it is incumbent on ed technologists to find ways to increase efficiency in ways other than increasing capacity of lecture halls - like allowing faculty to present content from their desktop via the web and rethinking the assumptions of getting everyone together in a large room. I certainly don't have all the answers or all the information, but just a little advocating for the devil.

That's a good point, Brad. You're right that desktop capture applications can do some of what systems like Echo360 can do. Something like Camtasia Relay is a good example of a desktop capture app that publishes into a centralized system, which could then integrate into an LMS, blogs, or whatever. I would say that Echo360's personal capture solution might be able to produce a more rich capture of multiple sources, and has some other collaboration and analytics features that Camtasia doesn't (can you tell I've been evaluating these tools for the last two months?). But still, you might say Echo360 is overkill if primarily what you want to do is desktop recording. I'm not convinced that that's all faculty will want to do, or if that's the right approach pedagogically speaking. But I guess that's why we need to pilot this stuff. I agree that packing students into larger and larger classroom isn't the right answer being more efficient. To some extent it's inevitable though, at least until more modern pedagogies that include active and social learning become more mainstream, and there's proven technology to support that on a large scale. Maybe lecture capture is just an interim step towards that model. I'm not sure..

this is a highly relevant article for me. by way of background, my director & I have been making the rounds to faculty meetings for the departments in our college (there are 13 in total) to talk about our center and what we do. one of the first comments/questions we get has something to do with lecture capture as a proposed "online course" model. for myriad reasons, I am against the notion that lecture capture can represent the foundation of a high-quality online learning experience. and, in fact, I am positive that the reason it comes up so often is that it is far and away the lowest burden on faculty in terms of effort: no course redesign; no reconsideration of teaching approaches; no change in anything, really, just record an already-ongoing in class presentation and stream it. I think it's lazy work and leads to a subpar instructional experience. that said, I have no issue with it at all as an ancillary resource for a res class. in fact, the content covered in many of our classes would benefit from allowing students to go back and review example problems, equations, in-class demos, etc.

At the ELI meeting, I went to an excellent session by some folks at George Washington University where they're using lecture capture as the primary delivery platform for a distance education program. According to them, it works very well and both on-campus and on-line students are happy with the program. My notes are here: http://www.personal.psu.edu/asg102/blogs/portfolio/2011/02/echo-360-at-george-washington.html

Lecture capture is just a technology. It can be used poorly (using it to re-broadcast bad teaching) or it can be used well (to prompt students and facilitate in-class discussion). The important thing is to understand its affordances and apply sound instructional design to its use. Again, I think people get hung up on the term "lecture capture" and miss all the other compelling uses of the technology. It take your point though, Gary, and there is a chance that these systems will encourage people to be lazy and call it innovative teaching practice anyway. But isn't that true with any technology?

good points, chris. again, my issue is with lecture capture as the foundation (ie primary content delivery approach) of a completely online course. as a way to making materials available outside of a residential course, I think lecture capture has clear application. we've also been working on "classroom flip" models for years in our college, which provide students with recorded lectures in preparation for in-class meetings. our architectural engineering department has done a good deal of these over the years and refined his process. so there is clear value to providing recordings of lectures. my criticisms are in the specific context of online instruction. we're incorporating lots of screencasts and other shorter video clips into courses currently under development, and have been doing so since I joined the center three years ago. but in terms of effective content delivery in an online environment, 50-minute captured lectures are a poor approach; if folks are interested in more info, I have a lit review I assembled last year on this exact issue. in short, long uninterrupted blocks of video are a poor choice for engagement & the realities of learner attention. however, steps can be taken to address these issues with pacing and building in opportunities for learner-to-content interaction within the larger elearning framework. to put another way, many of the benefits of redesigning for distance instruction are not the obvious ones: tasks such as revisiting learning objectives; reconsidering how interaction will work; reconsidering the balance between student-centered and instructor-led content delivery; how central student discussions or presentations are to mastery of specific course goals; and so on. i'm of the mind that simply posting recorded lectures does not force a closer examination of the course, and thus is philosophically equivalent to posting PPT slides/PDFs and calling that an online course. would we (as learning design professionals) la

I think it is better than the Aqua Bar, that's for sure ;-). I also wonder if this discussion would have happend as a comment thread to a blog post ... I doubt it. I like that the discussion is happening though. I wonder if we should organize an open discussion with people from around campus to see what they think. Conversations with designers and faculty might prove really interesting. Would the implementation of LC in all GPC's on campus change the design models for web courses or the world campus? Would that be a good thing? I just don't know. Anyone want to consider this as a way to get a larger conversation going?

aside: is there a character limit for these comments? I was looking over my second comment and the last 2 paragraphs are truncated. here they are: i'm of the mind that simply posting recorded lectures does not force a closer examination of the course, and thus is philosophically equivalent to posting PPT slides/PDFs and calling that an online course. would we (as learning design professionals) laugh at the notion that posting slides from a lecture constitutes a "quality course?" I think we might. and if we would, what makes a recorded lecture different? in my opinion, not much. and according to the educause quarterly article from 2009, there's no empirical evidence of an impact (pro or con) on grades, test scores or learning outcomes. anyway, thanks for the good discussion. I like this diigo thing, it's certainly got a leg up on delicious in the conversation department. :)

regarding a larger discussion, I think there would be interest. some collegues & I talked about it as a possible topic for the all-ld meeting late last fall, but the timing didn't work out. I've had conversations about it with elearing peers because "why don't we just post lectures as an online course?" is a common question from faculty. how, specifically, lc might change things is an interesting question. the ability to quickly & easily capture video would certainly have a benefit to online learning units, even if it's not full lectures. but something akin to a "one button studio" for faculty to create a quick demo/intro/expand on a confounding point? that would be great for sure.

I saw something else along these lines at ELI this year (I'll have to look up the notes). It was mostly about organizing students into discussion groups and assigning them a topic, role, position on the issue, etc... I could see us doing a hot team on several of these technologies. But about the flipping the classroom part of this article, we'll probably open a "Flip the Classroom" engagement initiative this fall to explore multiple approaches to creating the class preparation materials and in-class activities. Some of this is related to the Kahn Academy discussions we've been having. Some touch the lecture capture software that faculty could run in their offices to create personal captures going over material or key points. Anyway, I'd like to open this up to the creativity across Penn State and see what approaches people propose.

Awesome article! This is very similar to the way we are designing the modules for our NIH project. Allan, I would love to be part of "Flip the Classroom" engagement initiative this fall. If there is anything I can do please let me know.