Tegrity
By Dr. Anthony Dutton, Social Sciences
Tegrity is a part of the toolkit that we’ve had here at VCSU for a number of years, but it is one that
I think is underappreciated and therefore underused.
In its most basic form, Tegrity is a recording tool that captures live audio and video inputs and
delivers them to end users as streaming video, organized into chapters. This is how I use it to
capture lectures and instructor-centered activities in my classes. For face-to-face sessions, I
capture the video projected to the class (Powerpoint, a slideshow of images, or a document that
we are analyzing – as long as it is on the projector screen, Tegrity will capture it) along with the
audio of my lecture or of my side of the discussion. It takes me less than one minute to start
recording, and when I am done it uploads and is processed by the server in less than an hour. At
that point, any of my students can click on the Tegrity Recordings link in our Blackboard course
and stream the video, jumping ahead to chapters defined by when I clicked to bring up a new
bullet or advance the Powerpoint slide. For students who missed class or who need to review
content, this is a useful tool.
For online classes, I also record the video from my webcam, so students can see me as I walk them
through the material. It may seem like a minor thing, but it helps to personalize our class by
putting a face to the voice, and they can seamlessly switch between the screen view and webcam.
Tegrity also allows me to post documents to the class session and do some basic editing functions,
so I can enhance what otherwise would be a basic lecture.
This isn’t a tool that improves student-centered teaching methodologies, and so it should not be
the centerpiece of an entire course, but it is useful for capturing what you project on the screen in
class. It is also a very simple and accessible means of recording short teacher videos to insert into
Blackboard courses. The learning curve is gentle, and student accessibility is well-integrated into
the LMS.
This is the instructor’s interface for the Tegrity recorder.
Here is a Tegrity video as it appears to students in Blackboard, with chapters identified.
This is how the video stream appears to students.