This document summarizes a small pilot project called Pilot in Lecture Capture (PiLC) that tested the use of lecture capture technologies with undergraduate and postgraduate students. It describes how lectures from two courses were recorded using Adobe Connect and made available to students. Analytics from Blackboard showed how students accessed and used the recordings. Student focus groups and surveys found that students appreciated the flexibility to access lectures, but it affected lecture attendance. Lecturers noted benefits like refining lectures but also reflected on implications for teaching practices and curriculum design.

1. Pilot in Lecture Capture (PiLC): a small
web-based lecture capture project
Denise Sweeney and Simon Kear
Academic Practice Unit and Beyond Distance Research Alliance
University of Leicester
Funded by the Teaching Enhancement Programme, University of Leicester
ALT-C 2012, Paper 262, University of Manchester

2. Background
Adobe® Connect™

3. What do we know about lecture capture?
1954 - 136 2nd Yr UG students - University of Toronto - 4 groups
Single lecture
Identical examination (understanding & retention of content)
• Heard and saw a lecture delivered in a television studio
• Heard and saw this same lecture on a television screen
• Heard it over the radio
• Read it in manuscript
Experiment repeated with some modifications - 3 groups
Which group got the top score on the examination?

4. What do we know about lecture capture?
• Learner control – self-directed learning;
asynchronous access – empowering the learner with
control of the lecture and convenience/flexibility
(Simpson, 2006; Gosper, McNeil & Woo, 2010)
• Combination of f2f; video recorded lectures;
uploaded course documents (Soong et al, 2006)
• Mis-match between staff and student views (positive
views; on learning and achieving better results; made
it easier to learn (ALTC project - Gosper et al 2008)

5. Participants
92 first-year undergraduates (Chemistry)
45 taught postgraduate students (Media and
Communication)
2 lecturers
Icons by Everaldo Coelho

6. Hardware
Projector by Piotrus
Voice recorder by Stilfehler

7. The recordings
• 6 lectures of 1 hour each (Chemistry)
• 6 lectures of 2 hours each (Media and
Communication)
• All available in both Adobe Connect and MP3
formats.
What do they sound like?

8. Research findings overview
• Blackboard analytics
• Student focus groups (in progress)
• Comprehensive online questionnaire (use of lecture capture -
when, where, frequency of use, purposes) study patterns,
demographics
• Extended ‘phenomenographic’ interviews with 2 university
teachers on their experiences

9. Blackboard report
Media and Communication

10. Students
• Students appreciate the flexibility of access & support for
learning - staff have concerns
• contributes to a ‘blurring’ of the boundaries between internal
and external students
• Change lecture attendance patterns, raises questions about
the roles of lectures
• Demands changes in the way students learn and teachers
teach
• Affects the design of the whole curriculum has professional
and organisational development implications

11. Which format they preferred

12. How they listened

13. Why they listened

14. What they thought of lecture capture

15. Lecturers
Lecturers’ experience of being part of the project
Case study 1
… helped refine my lectures
‘Reviewing the recordings takes it all to another level’
Case study 2
… helped me reflect on future planning
‘… part of the planning process certainly…
improving the module…’

16. Those institutions using lecture capture technologies… Do you
have a ‘pedagogy strategy’…or plan to have one? Which of the
following do you provide?
•Mentoring
•Examples of best practice
•FAQs
•Guidelines
•Workshops
•Just-in-time technical support
•Student support

17. Thank you
Denise Sweeney Simon Kear
Educational Designer Senior Learning Technologist
Academic Practice Unit Beyond Distance Research Alliance
dms34@le.ac.uk spk7@le.ac.uk

18. References and links
• ‘Certain Media Biases’ (1954) New York Times, http://learningspaces.org/page/2/
• Gosper, M. V., McNeil, M. A. & Woo, K. (2010) Harnessing the Power of Technologies to Manage
Collaborative e-Learning Projects in Dispersed Environments, Journal of Distance Education, vol. 24, No. 1
pp. 167 - 186.
• Simpson, N. (2006). Asynchronous access to conventional course delivery: a pilot project. British Journal of
Educational Technology, 37(4), 527–537.
• Soong, S. K. A., Chan, L. K., Cheers, C., Hu, C. (2006) Impact of video recorded lectures among students,
proceedings of the 23rd annual ascilite conference, Who’s learning? Whose technology?, Sydney Australia,
pp. 789 - 793.
• Open EYA http://www.openeya.org/