Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages
- Learning from Lecture Capture at Newcastle Replay at Oxford, Recap at Newcastle
Both Newcastle University and the University of Oxford employ the Panopto software-based system to record
lectures. Professor Lähnemann has lectured at both universities, and has experience in using ‘ReCap’ (in Newcastle)
and ‘Replay’ at Oxford.
Her experience of using ReCap at Newcastle was in the School of Modern Languages, and she has only recently
begun to use Replay at Oxford. She intends to use Replay extensively in her courses from October 2015.
Professor Lähnemann is keen to explore the pedagogical innovations that Replay offers, and is hoping to use it to
enhance her teaching. Her experiences reveal much about the benefits and opportunities of recorded lectures, and
put to rest some of the concerns that have been voiced about recorded lectures in general.
Comparison
ReCap
 Run as an ‘opt-out’ system. All lectures are
recorded, unless lecturers specifically request
otherwise. If they do not record their lectures,
academics are required to make at least the
PowerPoint slides available online.
 Approximately half of the lecturers in the
School of Modern Languages opt out; though it
should be noted that many of the classes are
very interactive, and so unsuitable for recording.
 Lecturers are not permitted to edit their own
recordings, and the IT team will only trim the
ends of lectures; the lecturer cannot remove
anything from the middle.
 A university-wide policy establishes the rights of
lecturers to their materials.
 Access is restricted by the virtual learning
environment.
Replay
 So far Professor Lähnemann has used Replay
twice in Oxford. On both occasions she was
recording talks for the Bodleian Library’s
BODcast series of podcasts.
 She plans to use Replay to record her Middle
High German lecture series.
 She is also considering its use in conferences
 She is experimenting with short (ten-minute)
summary lectures that can then be made
available to students online.
 She is considering creating two-minute
presentations of her research for public
consumption.
 Access is restricted by the virtual learning
environment.
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Replay and ReCap
Differences

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At Newcastle, only IT staff are permitted to
edit the recordings. This delays the upload
process, and means that only the beginnings
and ends of the recordings are trimmed.
Periods of group work are not removed and
may detract from the recording.
At Oxford, lecturers have the opportunity to
edit their own recordings. This gives them
greater flexibility in editing out parts of the
lecture that may be unsuitable for online
viewing.
Newcastle follows an opt out system, while
Oxford prefers an opt in system.
Top Tips


Professor Lähnemann advises that new users
of the system experiment with it briefly in their
offices before using it, in order to reduce the
number of simple mistakes that may mar the
recording process.
She believes that online recordings are very
well suited to shorter summary talks, and plans
to create some to provide students with
additional learning resources. She recommends
that such recordings be kept as brief as
possible, as it is difficulty to concentrate on
longer talks when viewing recordings online.
Impact

At Newcastle, ReCap has proved to be very
popular amongst students.
 Newcastle’s School of Modern Languages believes
the system to be so useful that it makes recording
of all introductory courses (foundational material)
mandatory.
 Contrary to expectations, lecture capture improved
attendance rates at Newcastle. Prior to ReCap,
students who missed a lecture tended to skip
subsequent ones for fear of having fallen behind
their classmates. Recorded lectures allow them to
catch up on missed work, thereby enabling them to
attend future lectures in step with the curriculum.
 At Oxford, Professor Lähnemann expects that not
all of the students attending her Middle High
German lectures will be interested in the entire
series; rather, they will be searching for specific
information. Recordings will allow them to quickly
find the information they seek without having to sit
through the entire series.
Conclusions
Oxford is a late adopter of lecture recording, but this
has the advantage of allowing us to learn from others,
and to evaluate the benefits and drawbacks of such
systems. We are able to examine what universities
such as Newcastle have done well and adapt it for our
own use. An opt in system is much more suited to
Oxford’s devolved structure; lecturers are encouraged
to use the service voluntarily, to innovate their
practice and support their students.
Oxford plans to roll out Replay as a full service in 2016
Want to find out more?
Contact the Replay team at: replay@it.ox.ac.uk
Check out the latest Replay news at: http://blogs.it.ox.ac.uk/lecture-capture
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