Lecture Capturing Pilot

Lecture Capturing Links

Food for Thought Presentation (March 24, 2009)

Food for Thought Presentation (March 24, 2008)

March 24, 2009

During the 2008-09 academic year, the Academic Technology Center has continued to pilot lecture capturing in a number of undergraduate and graduate courses. This year, we've changed our lecture capturing system to Echo360, which has proven to have better fluidity and more compatibility with non-Windows based browsers than the old system. The goal of the pilot is to enhance student learning with little or no impact on faculty time. During WPI's intensive 7-week terms, students must absorb a large amount of information in a short time period. Recorded lectures allow students to review points they may not have fully understood during a lecture and to prepare for quizzes and exams. Lecture capturing pilots at other universities have shown that students who tend to struggle benefit most from lecture capturing. Other universities also report that lecture capturing has had little impact on class attendance.

The Echo360 system captures anything sent through the projector and automatically posts it in an integrated interface to a webpage that is linked in each course's myWPI site. Students are able to review the lectures straight through or by using thumbnails to jump around in the lecture. Lecture capturing has little impact on faculty - all faculty need to do is turn on the projector, use the Sympodium in the room instead of the chalkboard, and turn on a wireless microphone. This technology is best suited for lecture-based classes since there is no microphone for students. Faculty must repeat student questions before answering them.

So far we do not have any data that shows an impact on grades (grade comparisons are not possible due to other variables), but feedback from faculty and students is positive. All faculty who participated in the pilot want to use it again next year. Both faculty and students report that the recorded lectures do not have a significant impact on attendance (see chart below containing results from student surveys). Students feel that the recorded lectures have a positive impact on their performance and 88% of students would like recorded lectures available in more courses.

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Last modified: Mar 27, 2009, 08:21 EDT