3 Ways Lecture Capture Delivers a Successful Online Learning Experience

Plus, solutions like these enable schools to boost student achievement and retention, start and maintain a campus video library, and extend course options.

Because of these options, video solutions for online learning can be one of the most economically, technologically, and academically efficient ways to teach students.

However, even though faculty and students integrate video in their teaching and learning strategies, schools should not invest and integrate a video solution blindly.

This is where preparation comes in, Brown says.

“I do believe that sitting down and putting together a video-enablement plan for as many classrooms as possible is ultimately the most efficient way to go,” he says. “It allows you to get the shared resources like the best cameras, the best clear audio solution, the best video capture, and the lowest bulk prices.”

Brown also says video users should consider the role of the audience in regards to their lecture capture environments. Such consideration should include:

Production strategies

For example, “you need to have a strategy for how to get a mic for the professor, how to be able to hear the professor, how to keep them in the frame,” Brown says. “Are you going to have a camera operator? Are you going to invest in technology that automatically follows the person around?”

Privacy permissions

“Because of privacy, you can have students’ permission to be filmed implied in their student [handbook] agreements,” Brown says.

Keep the whole picture in mind

“Design your room with the whole academic interaction in mind you wish to capture,” Brown says. “Don’t accidentally only capture a portion of the academic activity that’s going on in the room, and don’t blindly under-design your room. Do it consciously, and then match your policies and buy-in from your faculty to compensate for it.”

3.) Digital Environments

For some schools and colleges, like Coastal Bend College, digital environments give students another online learning option.

Karl Clark, professor of history and government at Coastal Bend College, uses a digital environment tool called REVEL (by Pearson) – an online learning experience that combines digital textbooks and online course content for students to use as a learning tool – to assign his students videos and readings to complete for class.

For students’ learning needs, REVEL is equipped with interactive videos, digital textbooks (with highlighting, note taking and glossary features), quizzes to check for students’ understanding of the material, an app, which enables students to read and study on the go and on any device they choose to work with, and more.

REVEL also helps instructors, like Clark, to track students’ progress with an assignment calendar and performance dashboard, which allows him to pinpoint where individual students are struggling with the course content.

Clark says he uses this part of the tool to specifically check on his students’ progress with essay writing.

“It gives them a clear insight into how poorly they’re writing, but more importantly, it shows them how they can correct it,” he says. “That way, when they get their draft back, I expect those grammatical errors to be corrected. And when they resubmit their final paper, it [should] look like a solid academic paper coming in. I can show them ‘this is where your writing needs to be.’”

Learn more about how Coastal Bend College uses REVEL here.

Even though REVEL can shed light on students’ pain points, Clark says his students love using it for three key reasons:

• It is inexpensive – REVEL “is cheaper, so the books [found on REVEL used for class] are cheaper for them,” Clark says.

• Interactive – “That’s what the students enjoy,” he says.

• Audio capabilities – With REVEL’s audio capabilities, students can opt to have the solution read a book chapter out loud to them. This feature, Clark says, is especially important to non-traditional students who juggle other responsibilities with their studies.

“I have single parents or students who are [doing school] work and doing their job at the same time, and the chapter’s being read to them – it’s the lifestyle that they live,” he says. “They think it’s the greatest thing, because they can be home as a single parent feeding their baby and at the same time, have the chapter being read to them. They don’t have to wait for the baby to be asleep.”

Another benefit to digital environments like REVEL is that the learning processes are similar to in-person teaching, which integrates methods of the traditional classroom with online learning. Clark says he sees this most frequently when giving his in-class students and online students critical thinking questions to answer.

“With my face to face classes, because we’re together, we do discussions in class,” Clark says. “Even when it’s online, [students are assigned] the same question, but we just happen to be typing it in instead of talking about it…They’re about a 95 percent match.”

Before You Get Started

Before your school or college jumps on the lecture capture bandwagon to support its online learning programs, Brown says technology managers, or other invested parties, should reach out to other schools first.

Reaching out to schools, especially schools that went through the same technological struggles and decision-making processes, will guide your school in the right direction and help it make the best solution choices for its needs.

“My greatest advice is to speak to ask many schools that are like you as you can,” Brown says. “Then speak to them again when you get closer to choosing a system… Your brethren who have gone before you and built lecture capture [solutions] want to help you learn from what they did previously, only in exchange for you to share how you use it with them.”

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