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Spotify has been offering podcasts for some time now and the company has finally launched a new dedicated format just for that. Called Spotlight, the new “multimedia format” adds visual elements to podcasts and other audio content.

Spotlight, which introduces visual layers to complement the listening experience for podcasts, audiobooks, news, and other audio content,” Spotify said in a blog post. “Spotlight gives fans a deeper insight to their favorite artists, playlists, books, publishers and more by offering contextual visual elements, such as photos, video and text, that appear as users move through each episode.”

Higher education institutions are increasingly using lecture capture to help their students, according to a 2018 State of Video in Education report from Kaltura. There was a 21% increase in lecture capture use by institutions over the last two years, up from 65% in 2016 to 79% this year. Lecture capture doesn’t just take place in standard lecture halls too, with 10% of all those responding saying they already capture over half of all classes, wherever they take place, and 31% keen to follow their lead. Overall, 88% of respondents across higher education and K-12 (primary/secondary schools) already use lecture capture tools or intend to in the future.

21% report that over half of their students are involved in creating (as opposed to simply watching) video; among higher education respondents, the figure is a little lower at 15%.

Closed captions are in use at over half (52%) of institutions today, while 34% use interactive video quizzes to help students learn more effectively. Mobile apps that make it easy for students to watch videos on the move, or offline, are used by 39% of institutions, and a further 53% are eager to add this capability.

The new 2.3 release receives what developers categorized as "major new features" in nine different areas: file usability, repository, course pages, assignments, books, quizzes, SCORM, workshops, and update notifications.

Kaltura's version 3.0 of its Cross Campus Media Suite, an online video platform designed for education. Announced Tuesday, this release includes new versions of the platform's plug-ins for the Blackboard Learn, Moodle and Sakai learning management systems (LMS), in addition to a new 4.0 version of the Kaltura MediaSpace campus video portal.

Actually these days you don’t hear much about MOOCs at all. In the national press there’s almost a MOOC amnesia. It’s like it never happened.

Shah is our podcast guest this week, and he argues that MOOCs are having an impact, but mainly for people who are enrolling in MOOC-based degrees, where they can get a credential that can help them in their careers without having to go back to a campus. Of course, that’s a very different outcome than the free education for the underserved that was originally promised.

I think it's still new, so colleges think that if they get in now they might establish the degree and maybe capture the market early. I think it's a bigger advantage for smaller universities than the bigger because they get to sort of undercut the big players. For many colleges, they might be locally well-known but not globally. They get a chance to reach more users plus it's good money if it works out.

Coursera's on a growing streak. The number of new institutions of higher education to sign onto the free online course site has more than doubled, bringing the total count of colleges and universities participating to 33 from 16. Among the new schools participating: Berklee College of Music, Columbia University, Ohio State, Vanderbilt, and Wesleyan.

One new participant is the University of California Irvine, which has added seven courses and is already involved in a Coursera-like initiative run by the OpenCourseWare Consortium, but without the interactive components that Coursera provides. UCI also offers educational materials on iTunes U, YouTube, Connexions,

Lecture capture has attracted a good deal of hostility recently. One article in Times Higher Education reported reservations from academics about the effect that recording lectures for online viewing could have on student participation and attendance (“University of Huddersfield gives tutorial filming plan green light”, News, 5 July). Another article aired worries that editing recorded lectures might eat into academics’ time, and that they may be used by management to assess performance, or by students to expose staff to ridicule (“Disability cuts lead to universal lecture capture policy”, 28 July). My own experience has led me to a very different view. Early this year, after more students enrolled on my ethics and society course than our school’s largest lecture theatre could hold, arrangements were made to live-stream the lectures into an overflow room. Because the capture system also recorded the lectures, we decided to post them on the course’s online learning platform and see what happened. The results were very positive.

48 per cent of respondents said that the recordings greatly enhanced their learning, with 94 per cent acknowledging some positive impact.

on average, each student viewed the library of 31 lectures 14 times, for a total duration of five hours. Lectures were watched for an average of 22 minutes, indicating selective use rather than passive reception.

Copyright and intellectual property policy on lecture capture ‘evolving’, says report, but institutions should provide supportive advice to academics

Universities will take “risks” on copyright and intellectual property rights infringement when recording lectures because there is still so much “uncertainty” within the sector as to what is appropriate policy, according to the authors of new research into the issue.

nearly three-quarters of UK institutions started lecture recording in 2016, but 40 per cent of respondents to the report’s survey said that their institutions only “kind of” had policy documents on the topic.

YouTube is launching captions for its live video feeds at Google I/O Tuesday. New new feature will be unveiled with the Google I/O live video stream, but is also going to be available to any YouTube Live partner

“We are living in an incredible age for learning, when there’s so much knowledge available, that one would think that this is good news for higher education,” Bryan Alexander told me recently. Alexander writes often about the future of higher education and is finishing a book on the subject for Johns Hopkins University Press. “Yet we’ve seen enrollment in higher education drop for six consecutive years.”

In 2015, Georgia Tech formed a commission on the future of higher education, and its 48 members were asked to imagine what a public research institution might look like in 2040.

The primary recommendation of the Georgia Tech report is that the university turn itself into a venue for lifelong learning that allows students to “associate rather than enroll.” Such a system would provide easy entry and exit points into the university and imagines a future in which students take courses either online or face-to-face

YouTube announced this week it will invest $20 million to support educational creators, resources and tools on the popular Google-owned video platform.

The investment will provide funding for educational creators on the platform, a new “Learning” channel with curated playlists, and resources and support for EduTubers. YouTube-funded videos will also give brands more opportunities to run ads and sponsor conten

2. Attracting Prospects When high-school graduates are going to enroll in particular educational institutions, they are more than likely to follow them on social media to get more information about them. Current students can share their experience, thoughts, and opinions on the platforms so that candidates and their parents can get a deeper insight into the on-campus life. In a nutshell, online collaboration helps universities to stand out from the crowd.

When someone wants to complain about or give recognition to a particular service provider, they prefer doing that through online collaboration. This is mainly because there are many users who are ready to pass their own opinion on this issue instantly. This is how universities can use social media to monitor what has been said about their services and find a way to maintain or restore their reputation. It is important for unis to have a good reputation; otherwise, they may face problems associated with funding and recruitment.

he Consortium for School Networking on Wednesday announced a new initiative in partnership with the online educator network edWeb.net designed to improve technology for rural school districts. The project, “Tech for Rural Districts,” will offer support for district leaders through a webinar series and a new online platform.

Topics will include broadband access, avenues to acquire technology funding, and community involvement. The webinars will be archived on the initiative’s online learning community, which launched today and is open to the public.

Training courses, weekend intensives and pre-made video tutorials are all ways that schools can support their educators at a low cost. But most importantly, teachers need to feel supported from all areas, from administrators and colleagues to tech developers. If teachers feel as though they can make mistakes, then they will be more willing to try new things and use these failures to help refine digital learning.

New Tech Should Make a Teacher’s Life Easier When I think about teachers working together to share digital techniques and new apps, I think of the most powerful reasons we educators are pushing on into the digital frontier.

The study focused on the Echo360 system Swinburne introduced in 2014. Under the scheme, lectures are automatically recorded unless academics opt out — something few have done, Dr Pechenkina said.Overall, 71 per cent of students said lecture recordings helped them, and 70 per cent wanted more of it. Just 28 per cent of academics wanted more of their classes recorded, with most saying they would prefer lectures were not taped at all.

While lecture-recording provides greater flexibility for students, “it has the potential to do the opposite for lecturers — particularly those whose teaching approach or subject material does not lend itself readily to current models of recording”.The paper says technological developments could spawn new ways of recording, enabling lecturers to tailor their approach to the cameras. But this, of course, could “further decrease student attendance at lectures”.Dr Pechenkina said lecture recording was unlikely to disappear anytime soon. “We need to train academics better in how to use the technology to enhance their teaching.” She said new advances would make recording less restrictive, with cameras able to “move around and capture widely what goes on in the classroom. The capacity is there, or it can be there within a very short period.”

Dr Pechenkina said academics were also using the technology to prerecord and disseminate lectures ahead of time, allowing class time to be focused on group discussion

edX’s newest partner, the University of Texas System, has more pragmatic ambitions. It wants to use them to get more students through college more quickly and for less money.