Lecture Capturing Pilot

Lecture Capturing Links

Food for Thought Presentation (March 24, 2008)

Video Synopsis of Lecture Capturing Pilot

March 4, 2008

During the 2007-08 academic year, the Academic Technology Center has been piloting a lecture capturing system called Accordent in some undergraduate Math and Biology courses. 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 Accordent system captures video of the class (which is intended for point-of-reference only) and 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. Students feel that the recorded lectures have a positive impact on their performance and 94% of students would like recorded lectures available in more courses. The chart below indicates when students are using the recorded lectures. For more details, view the Lecture Capturing Pilot Details link.

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Last modified: Mar 24, 2008, 08:30 EDT