Capturing the moment
Memorial University’s lecture-capture technology lets students review classes online
Even when Caitlin Woodford is sick, she doesn’t have to miss chemistry class. That’s because her professor, Travis Fridgen, is one of Memorial University’s professors using the school’s lecture-capture technology, which records their lectures — not just the audio and video, but other components, including notes and diagrams made by professors on a smart board, and displayed next to his lecture — for viewing later online.
Students log in to a secure site to access any classes they might have missed or just want to review.
“The system’s good for when you don’t remember how to do something or are trying to remember something from class, and you can go back and look at it, and you can see him explain it and go through the problem,” she said. “So that helps a lot. And if you miss class one day, you can see what you miss.”
Woodford, a first-year student, also finds the recorded lectures an invaluable study aid, and rewatches lectures in preparation for tests.
“I usually do it before an exam, when I’m preparing. When I’m going over questions, I’ll go back to that day and see how he did it, and figure out how to do it myself,” she said. Fridgen
has been using the technology for about four years now. “(Memorial) asked me to pilot it. I was on a committee where the associate vice-president was interested in this technology, as was DELTS (Distance Education, Learning and Teaching Support),” said Fridgen, who admits to being skeptical at first.
“I was kind of against the technology just to be used in the way that it sounded like they wanted it to, as a replacement to lectures. I said, ‘I want my students in lecture,’ whereas they were thinking — initially — some people were thinking of, ‘ Oh, well, we don’t have a lot of big classrooms. Now we can not have the students in the classroom and they can look at the lectures at home,’ which I didn’t think was the best way to use it.”
But Fridgen came around as the focus settled on using the technology as a supplement to class, instead of a replacement for class.
Another potential pitfall of the technology is that even if the university doesn’t intend for the online lectures to purposely keep students out of the classroom, students will blow off a lecture and just watch it later.
Woodford admits she has felt the temptation to skip class, since she knows the lecture will later be available online, but says the recorded lecture isn’t a substitute for the live version.
“For me, it’s better when I go to class, even though it’s kind of the same thing,” she said. “But it’s good to know it’s there if I can’t go to class. At least I can look at the lecture-capture and watch it all over again.”
That’s partly because Fridgen has adjusted his teaching method slightly — and not just, as he jokes, by keeping his once more-frequent political comments to a minimum.
“I’m less likely to say things that can be used against me,” he says, laughing.
In addition to making part of the class grade dependent on participation, he employs in-class engagement that lets students use their cellphones or “clickers” in exercises.
“I ask a question — multiplechoice, numeric, you could ask for a phrase, you can even do testing — and they answer. You give them two to five minutes, depending on the complexity, or maybe I break it down into smaller portions of questions, and they answer. So they get a participation mark.”
Fridgen was using in-class questions and clickers before he started using lecture-capture, but says he’s found it’s a good way to keep class attendance up. A big benefit of the online lectures, he says, is that students are less worried about frantically scribbling notes on absolutely everything he says. Knowing they’ll be able to go over the lecture as often as they like, students are freed up to concentrate more on what professors say, helping them retain more.
“I do have students who will sit there, and I’ll ask them why they didn’t write down the problem, and they’ll say, ‘I’m just watching you do it,’” he said. “I’ve got one kid that has a little book, just a small little book — he doesn’t take any notes at all — and he writes down the time (of a particular problem or concept) and then he goes back and gets the solution to the problems if he needs to.” Denise
Carew, an instruction design specialist with Memorial’s Distance, Education, Learning and Teaching Support department, helps instructors set up the technology in their classrooms.
“A couple of hours after the recording has stopped and is finished, it automatically gets uploaded,” she said. “The students who are enrolled in the class, they log in to Desire2Learn (Memorial’s online student support software), and they click on a link to all of the lectures, and then from there they choose the specific lecture that they want to view for that class.”
She agrees with Fridgen that a big benefit of the technology is allowing students to better concentrate on the class.
“Just recently, there’s been a lot of research on students multi-tasking in class. It allows them to really focus on the class instead of having to multi-task and write down notes and things like that,” she said. “They can truly listen to what’s happening and engage in what’s happening.”
The technology isn’t suited for all classes, Carew said — classes that are more centred around discussions than lectures aren’t as well suited to take advantage of the technology, which is set up in only about 10 of the university’s larger classrooms.
Based on research of users of the technology, Carew said, students typically tend to access the lectures a few hours after the class — for review while the material is still fresh — and the night before exams. And it’s a godsend for any student who misses class due to illness.
Like Fridgen, she’s not concerned that students will use the technology as a substitute for the lectures.
“From some research that we’ve done here, we’ve noticed that the students who access the lectures the most often are the ones who miss fewer than three classes,” she said. “So if you’re a student who is really engaged in the class and is really attentive to the class, you are more apt to actually use the lectures than someone who misses class.”