Group items tagged

ability to securely deliver rich media through a video streaming server

1) Automate the Recording Process to Make It Effortless

The University of Massachusetts Lowell has an opt-in policy for lecture capture. Faculty log in to a website and select which of their courses they want to record. The Department of Instructional Technology then schedules the lecture capture appliance to record the lectures for that course automatically, and creates a link in Blackboard or on a website where students can go to retrieve the lectures for viewing.

The university uses Echo360 lecture capture appliances and some Sonic Foundry Mediasite appliances

While lecture capture appliances are "not cheap," according to Lucas, they reduce the complexity for faculty and staff. "We're weighing it against going into a room to fix a computer issue because of drivers not working and it's not seeing a camera and it's not seeing a document camera," said Lucas. "With the appliance, it basically runs 24/7, and for the most part it's pretty rock solid."

Campuses with large-scale deployments generally focus on lecture halls first and gradually expand to smaller classrooms. For those that have a mix of appliance-based and software-based systems, they tend to place the appliances in the large lecture halls, where they can get a bigger bang for their buck, and use the lower-cost lecture capture software in smaller rooms.

You have to think about which rooms are really good candidates for lecture capture, and those are typically middle and large classrooms. We focused our efforts on the classrooms that are what we consider the large gateway classrooms,"