QSSC14-P4
13 January 2014
Lecture Capture at Loughborough - Update
1. Introduction
2. Installations
3. Support
4. Usage
5. IPR issues
6. Benefits of lecture capture
7. Feedback from students
8. Feedback from staff
9. Use by elite athletes
10. Lecture capture and attendance
11. Loughborough lecture capture conference July 13
12. Archiving and re-use
Screenshot from 12MPP503/603 Polymerisation and Polymer Blends
1) Introduction
The ReVIEW automated lecture capture service at Loughborough, based on the Echo 360
commercial system, was first piloted on campus in Semester 1 2009 by Prof Chris
Szejnmann and Dr Marcus Collins from PHIR, as part of a suite of learning technologies that
they introduced on the then new History programmes. The pilot was very successful, from
the perspective of the module tutors involved, but also from the perspective of the students
who were (and continue to be) very positive about the benefits.
Since 2009/10 the service has grown organically, in terms of both infrastructure and usage. It
is now recognised and resourced as a mainstream central service. To date, ReVIEW has
been an opt-in service for module tutors, with only a limited number of cases so far where it
has been adopted strategically at programme level. Notable examples are the MSc REST
(the biggest users in terms of student views) and MSc programmes / modules in Materials
with DL students.
This is the same position as that adopted by most institutions to date, but increasingly
institutions are looking to move to the next stage, where lecture capture becomes as routine
as use of the VLE. Aston, Bath, Essex, Newcastle and UCL are some of the institutions we
are aware of which are now doing lecture capture ‘at scale’. In the case of Essex, this now
means that, by default, all lectures across the institution are now captured and published via
the VLE unless an opt-out is invoked.
Loughborough is now recognised as having considerable experience of using lecture capture,
in some innovative ways, and has an opportunity to gain competitive advantage over other
peer institutions through wider strategic adoption of a learning technology which is much
appreciated by students.
2) Installations
As of 22/11/13, there are 66 rooms equipped with automated lecture capture facilities. Of
these, 20 have ‘fixed’ installations (using a hardware ‘capture appliance’ installed in the
podium. The others use the ‘classroom capture’ software-only variant. The format of the
resulting capture looks the same to students, although fixed installations are capable of
higher capture quality and also support simultaneous capture / live streaming (which is now
being used by CREST on the MSc REST programme).
3) Support
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The ReVIEW lecture capture service is jointly supported by Teaching Support (FM), IT
Services, and the Teaching Centre, and it has been an excellent example of cross-service
collaboration since its inception in Semester 1 2009/10. The different aspects of supporting
the service are distributed as follows:
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Teaching Support take the majority of bookings for the system and schedule recordings
via the online Echo System. SA
Teaching Support are responsible for the A/V installations.
Teaching Support send out technicians across campus at the start of lectures if the
lecturer is new to the system, to ensure that everything is functioning correctly.
IT Services (the E-learning System Team) are responsible for the server infrastructure,
including regular upgrades to the system (as of September 2013, V5.3).
The Teaching Centre E-learning Team promote the system, provide user training
(bespoke and scheduled), and assist with editing / publishing to Learn.
All support requests and bookings should be addressed to review@lboro.ac.uk . Further
information, including case studies etc, is available via the E-learning Blog at
http://blog.lboro.ac.uk/elearning/?page_id=1264 and
http://blog.lboro.ac.uk/elearning/?cat=13 .
4) Usage
Some key figures: as of 22/11/13, there are
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2552 captures on the system, of which 537 have been recorded since 1 October 2013.
This represents a threefold increase in captures compared with the same period last year.
There are 199 staff registered on the system, the majority of whom are module tutors.
The MSc REST programme has had over 40,000 views since January 1st.
To put the number of captures into context: in 2012/13, UCL had over 9000 captures,
Newcastle over 10000, and Essex close to 20000. This Semester, Newcastle are capturing
over 300 hours of lectures every day.
It should be noted too that, unlike UCL which has a policy of only capturing academic
lectures (this even excludes inaugurals), at Loughborough we have promoted the service as
being suitable for recording any kind of presentation. Those of us who support the service
have taken the view that this was important in terms of increasing the Return On Investment,
and it is an approach that we believe has been successful.
ReVIEW has been used to capture diverse non-academic sessions including:
 Conferences
 Departmental meetings
 Launch events
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Presentations by senior management
Inductions
Retirement advice for staff
Health and safety training
Staff development workshops
Language / presentation skills support for non-native speaker lecturers
Procurement tender presentations
Pre-arrival induction for overseas students
Careers advice
Screenshot from CEC presentation on ReVIEW
In terms of the diversity of academic captures, this too is increasing, and over the last year
we have seen the three variants of ReVIEW / Echo 360 used to record student presentations,
feedback to students, ‘flipped’ content, etc.
5) IPR Issues
IPR issues are frequently cited as a particular problem of lecture capture, and as an
impediment to scaling up a lecture capture service.
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With planning, this need not be the case, for a number of reasons. Firstly, infringement of
third-party copyright is not just a problem with lecture capture; it applies to other aspects of
teaching and learning, and in fact in the last two months the University has been served with
two copyright infringement notices relating to online teaching resources. If staff follow the
advice that is provided by the Library, the Teaching Centre and others regarding copyright (in
particular, sourcing and using media legitimately), this can easily be avoided. One example
of this: the University subscribes to the BoB (Box of Broadcasts) service which makes it easy
to find and use TV programmes in the classroom without fear of infringing copyright, and this
licence also covers lectures which are captured on ReVIEW.
It is true that students sitting at the front of a lecture theatre might, if they ask a question, find
that their voice is audible on the ReVIEW recording. This is rarely going to lead to a
complaint, but lecturers can avoid this becoming a problem by making it clear to students at
the beginning of the semester / beginning of the lecture that lectures are being recorded. If
necessary, ReVIEW captures can be edited to remove short clips. This has not happened
once since ReVIEW was introduced.
Potentially more problematic is the question of ownership of copyright in the captured lecture,
and the performance rights of the lecturer. There is currently some uncertainty over the
copyright clause in the Academic Conditions of Service and it would be helpful for this to be
resolved.
6) Benefits of lecture capture
The benefits depend in part on the way that lectures are captured and on the usability of the
lecture capture system. If lectures are recorded ‘manually’, with the cameraman panning
from the presenter to the projector, and with the end result put online as a single video
sequence, this is not as usable as it might be for the student: it’s difficult to read what was on
the projector, and it takes time to find a particular section in the recording.
By default, REVIEW captures the audio recording, the video of the presenter, and what was
presented on screen as separate streams, only synchronising them at playback, with a
‘thumbnail’ index of the presentation created automatically which allows the student to
navigate instantly to the required section of the lecture. This makes the system highly usable
and is one of the reasons why students have been overwhelmingly positive about it (see
below).
Lectures captured using a system such as ReVIEW / Echo 360 are, or might be, of benefit to:
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distance learners
elite athlete students away training or competing
disabled students
students whose first language is not English
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students who are obliged to take on part-time jobs and are unable to attend every
lecture in person
postgraduate students already in employment
students on modules that have in the past proven to be particularly challenging
all students at revision time
students on modules where the lecturer is a non-native speaker of English
academics wishing to rethink how they use contact time more efficiently and
effectively (the ‘flipped classroom’ approach)
academics wishing to reuse specific lectures from another module / programme /
school as preparatory / supplementary material
reducing the disruption caused by a major incident on campus (epidemic; snow; etc)
facilitating peer observation
7) Feedback from students
‘I think lecture capture is a really useful tool and I have felt the benefits. In the modules that used
lecture capture I noticed a difference in how myself and my peers experienced a lecture. I felt I could
concentrate and absorb a lot more rather than worrying about making sure everything was noted.
After the lecture I would then go to the online recordings and watch the key points not only for
revision but to help me understand some of the extra reading too.’ Samantha Davis, Teaching Centre
Intern 2013/14, who experienced ReVIEW as a PHIR student.
Students have been overwhelmingly positive about ReVIEW, especially when they have
experienced it directly. The response has been even more positive where students have
had experience of an older generation video recording system (the MSc REST
programme in SEESE), where lecture viewing figures more than doubled from one year to
the next, and focus group feedback showed that students appreciated the much improved
quality and usability.
8) Feedback from staff
Feedback from staff who have used the system has also been overwhelmingly positive.
Very few staff have used the system and decided that they will not use it again.
Anecdotally, many staff have told me that they were anxious about using ReVIEW for the
first time but soon realised that there was little to worry about and that it did not increase
their workload.
Nevertheless, fear of the new / unknown is a barrier to further take-up, and to help
counter this I have had agreement from 10 academic members of staff who have used
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ReVIEW, including senior colleagues, to act as lecture capture ‘mentors’. The mentors
are: Dr Marcus Collins (PHIR); Dr Crispin Coombs (SBE); Dr Luke Garrod (SBE); Prof
George Havenith (Design School); Prof Jon Huntley (Wolfson); Dr Brian Jarvis (Arts,
English and Drama); Dr Carol Robinson (MEC); Prof Liz Stokoe (Social Sciences); Martin
White (AACME); Dr Sheryl Williams (EESE).
9) Use by elite athletes
The use of lecture capture has already been piloted in a limited way to support elite
athlete students while away at training camps / competitions; for instance, the 2012
Olympic field hockey bronze medal winner Laura Unsworth had lectures on two modules
captured in semester 2 in 2013 specifically because she was going to be away at a
national squad training camp. This semester, Giselle Ansley and David Condon are
having lectures captured for similar reasons. With over 500 elite athlete students across
multiple sports currently studying at Loughborough, there are however many more
students who might benefit from being supported this way.
10) Lecture capture and attendance
As the use of lecture capture increases internationally, the research base is also rapidly
expanding, with many researchers specifically interested in the relationship between the
availability of captured lectures with attendance. The perception that roll-out of lecture
capture will inevitably lead to declining attendance is one of the main barriers in many
institutions.
Arun Karnad (2013) at the LSE has compiled a report summarising the findings of recent
lecture capture research relating to this question which can be viewed here:
http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/50929/
With regard to attendance, he concludes that “the complexity of student behaviour using
recorded lectures […] makes it difficult to link access to recorded lectures and
attendance”.
Karnad, Arun (2013)Student use of recorded lectures: a report reviewing recent research into the use of
lecture capture technology in higher education, and its impact on teaching methods and attendance.
London School of Economics and Political Science, London, UK
Since the ReVIEW service began in October 2009, there has only been one anecdotal
report of a possible connection between the introduction of lecture capture to a module
and a drop in attendance (this Semester, in SBE).
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11) Loughborough lecture capture conference July 13
The Teaching Centre held its first annual lecture capture conference in the Keith Green
Building on July 3rd 2013. Many of the sessions were kindly written up by David Hopkins
from Leicester University; his report can be read here:
http://staffblogs.le.ac.uk/telsocsci/report/report-pedagogy-policy-and-support-takinglecture-capture-to-the-next-level/ .
The first keynote presentation, by Steve Rowett of UCL, can be viewed here:
http://blog.lboro.ac.uk/elearning/?p=2415 .
The main theme to emerge from the day was that increased usage of lecture capture, to
the extent that it will become commonplace, is inevitable, replicating the evolution in
usage of the VLE. There was also an acknowdgement, among an audience that was
generally enthusiastic about the benefits of lecture capture, that some colleagues are
fearful of the technology and will need both understanding and encouragement.
12) Archiving and re-use
We do not currently have any explicit policy on archiving or re-use of captured lectures or
other content. As use of ReVIEW scales up significantly, this will need to be addressed, if
only because storage is not infinitely available. (That said, to put this into context, the
University CCTV system currently uses over 1000 times more space for the video
recordings it generates.)
With regard to re-use: some institutions, such as Newcastle, have a clear policy of
forbidding any use of captured lecture content outside the cohort to which the lecture was
originally delivered. However, introducing such a policy here would perhaps be
unnecessarily heavy-handed, preventing re-use of materials that benefit students.
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