Engagement

Day 5: Taking advantage of lecture recordings

Welcome to Day 5.

Image source: Pixabay https://pixabay.com/en/adult-city-girl-indoors-laptop-2179262/

Today we will be looking at the role of lecture recordings and how we can use them as a tool for enhancing teaching. Many of you will already be using Echo360 recordings in your courses. These recordings are usually automatically capturing anything you display on the screens during your lecture along with whatever you are saying during the lecture. 

There has been a lot of research and discussion on the value of lecture recordings and how much of them get watched by students, if at all! The following article Characterizaion of Catch-up Behaviour: Accession of Lecture Capture Videos Following Student Absenteeism.’  Many students watch or review lecture recordings for a number of reasons. These could include:

  • Reviewing of an area of the lecture they want to clarify understanding of
  • Revision for exams
  • They may have missed the lecture
  • They speak English as a second language and need to review content

The following article by  Bennet and Maniar, ‘Are Videoed Lectures an Effective Teaching Tool? ‘ also further outlines some of the benefits lecture recordings can have for students.

In the following short video from Concordia University, staff discuss the benefits they have found in using  lecture capture. 

Having these recordings gives you a great resource that you can continue to use in your lectures. In this session we are going to look at ways that we can maximise lecture recordings and develop an artefact that becomes a reusable resource for you to use in your course.

Lecture videos can have value to student learning but there are things we can do to make them more usable and engaging for students and make them a valuable part of your teaching practice. The following article from the University of Queensland looks at some of the Pedagogical benefits of using video.

Here a few more articles you may also like to read about the value of the lecture video

 

Speaking to the invisible audience

Image source: Pixabay https://pixabay.com/en/auditorium-classroom-lecture-572776/

Often when lecturing we forget that we have a whole other audience out there watching on the recording. We have noticed a number of posts in the forums over the last few days about the issues of lecture capture recordings and how to lecture to the recording while delivering your face to face lecture, especially if you are incorporating active learning strategies in your lecture. There are a few simple strategies that can be used to help those watching the recording and the way in which you deliver your lecture will impact the final recording. Thinking about some strategies will help produce a quality final product.

The following short articles,  ‘Delivering your lectures’, from the University of Minnesota and ‘7 Things You Should Know About Video’ have some great useful tips. 

These are:

  • Repeat the question if someone asks a question from the audience, so that it is captured on the audio.
  • If you are pointing or demonstrating something explain what you are doing
  • If you are doing a group or discussion activity explain what is happening through the microphone. You could put up a slide with the activity for those watching the recording and then get them to post their discussion ideas in a forum
  • If there is period of silence while classroom activity is happening you can go into the recording after the lecture and cut that section out
  • Creating slides as part of your lecture that give instructions for those watching the recording so they know what is happening

Enhancing your Echo recordings

Most Echo360 lecture capture recordings currently capture the screen in your lecture theatre onto which your power point slides have been project or anything else you may have shown on the screen such as a website etc and your audio and what you have been saying in the lecture. This recording is then processed and is available to your students through the Echo block located within your course.

As well as the classroom capture system we also have Echo360 Personal Capture (PCAP) system which allows you to make recordings on your computer from your desk. You could use PCAP to make a quick, more targeted recording and add it to your course.

There are a few strategies that you can use to make these recordings more usable for students and at the same time create a re-usable asset that you can re-use.

Some of these include:

  • Going through the recording and edit out any silences or blank spaces, cut out any irrelevant conversation.
  • Focus on the parts of the video that contain the key points or messages you wanted to get across in your lecture, you could retain these key sections and break them down into a number of smaller, more watchable recordings that you can use
  • Have a section of the recording and then add a slide into it in which you might have a question on it, students could then answer the question and discuss it in a forum
  • Pose questions in your video for students to think about
  • If you are doing an activity in the classroom or having a class discussion allow time for those watching to think of answers or points
  • In your Wattle (Moodle) site you can put a number of resources associated with your recording for that weeks lecture such as:
    •  PowerPoint slides
    • A PDF document of the lecture
    • A forum or chat room in which students can discuss the lecture
    • A short formative assessment task, such as a quiz or feedback questionnaire in which they can test their knowledge of the topic
    • Any links to resources or further readings

The image below illustrates how you could set out your Moodle course to integrate activities alongside your lecture recording.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In your current Echo recordings you can also use the heat map for your lecture recordings to see which sections of the video are being re-watched by students – this could be because it was a section of the lecture they did not understand. You could use this as a guide to editing your recordings and just use the sections that were key to students and maybe develop some quizzes questions around that.

Here are some resources you may find useful for editing your Echo360  lecture recordings:

For help in editing your recordings in Echo360 at ANU go to page 26 of the User guide and the Edit UNSW lecture recordings guide’ could also be helpful.

Don’t forget to consider copyright!

Another thing to keep in mind is Copyright – ensure that material  you are using and displaying in lectures is copyright compliant, such as images and video you may be using in your lecture that might be captured by the recording. More information about copyright can be found here.

Further Resources:

The following links are extra resources you may like to look at about the use of lecture video capture in courses.

Discussion questions:

Many of you would have used Echo360 recordings in your courses or used video as a teaching tool. Please post your experiences or thoughts in the forum.

  • What has been your experience of recordings? Have you found it useful?
  • Do you think it does affect attendance to lectures?
  • What makes a good educational video? How is this different from (or similar to) lecture recordings?

 

40 thoughts on “Day 5: Taking advantage of lecture recordings

  1. My general experience of Echo360 is good. But there are a few small things that I don’t like:
    I like to move around the lecture theatre when I teach – I find it easier to be animated and to engage the audience when I do. However, this can have problems with the audio recording as often the radio mic is out of battery (if the last lecturer did not put it on the recharger properly – this happens several times per semester), so I am confined to the lectern. The other problem is that I use very visual slides and a laser pointer to emphasise what I am talking about. The laser pointer does not appear on the Echo, so I have to use a mouse, which I find very unnatural during a lecture and in physically restricting. I am gradually getting used to adapting my style, but I don’t think it is as good for recorded lectures.

    A useful tip…. in more recent version of PowerPoint, the mouse pointer can be changed to a red laser dot (right click on the presentation and select “pointer options”). This is much easier to see on the Echo recordings, and does not disappear when inactive, like the arrow pointer does.

    I have been experimenting with Camtasia software to try and produce better lecture recordings, where I have more control over the editing. If I try and use it to edit last years’ Echo recordings, the quality is not great though. I will also try the new “One Button Studio” in the Cheifley library (http://anulib.anu.edu.au/using-library/one-button-studio) to record some additional parts to the lecture for putting on the Wattle site. Has anyone tried it yet?

    Finally, I always save my Echos to my hard disk and look over last year’s recording before starting to prepare the current year’s lecture. This helps me to make edits and improvements in the material and presentation.

    1. Hi Brian, thanks for those helpful tips – you are already well down the track of enhancing and augmenting your face to face lectures with Echo recordings – it is inspiring to see you working like this!

    2. Hi Brian. I tested the One Button Studio last week and it’s so easy to use. You can plug-in your PPT slides which appear on the screen behind you or if you prefer a plain background just bring down the backdrop. Video quality is good as well as sound. Just be sure you bring a USB stick with enough storage space.

  2. I will be using video in teaching this semester and I am a bit anxious about it. I have seen videos by other academics and think it must be difficult to talk to students who are not there.
    I have gone through some of the resources which are provided on this page, which seem quite reassuring. From student’s perspective I think video recordings are good students could go through the lectures and explore the contents later on. Videos are especially good for students who have English as their second language as they may rewind the parts they don’t understand, which is something the students are unable to do in a class. My experience of recordings when I was a student was very good. I thought that there should be more Video recordings, especially in the classes where there were a lot of statistical formulas and explanations.
    Recordings may affect attendance to the lectures, but then they also provide students the opportunity to listen to the recordings on their own time. The lecturer may have a way to see which student watched the video or recording and which didn’t.
    I think a good educational video is the one which is clear, in simple language, where the presenter speaks slowly and explains all the contents clearly.

  3. It would be a good idea if we can record our lectures but I think maybe it impinge upon students’ attendance to the lecture since they will be sure to receive the slides later

  4. Thanks for those comments Tehzeeb. You point out some very good reasons for the need for lecture recordings. In terms of ensuring attendance at lectures, I think most lectures are well attended at the beginning, then drop away after a while, partly because students prefer to catch up by looking at the recordings, which means they can be more flexible fitting their studies into busy personal lives. This is understandable, as many students are working one or more jobs just to survive, and/or have family responsibilities, so obviously the more flexible their learning can be the better it suits them.

    According to ANU policy you are not able to make attendance an assessment component. So if you are requiring student attendance at all of your lectures, it is necessary to think through the reasons for this. At university level learning students are expected to know what they need to do to pass their units, and if watching all of your lectures is essential for them to pass, they need to be advised of this, and to ensure they do catch up with all lectures. How they do this is not relevant – whether they attend face to face, or watch the recorded lecture should not be an issue. I would be interested to know what others think about making lecture attendance compulsory and the reasons.

    1. I like the idea of having a culture where students attend. As I mentioned in one of my earlier posts, I believe we do students a disservice if we let them believe that attendance is not expected or that “everything will be recorded” – especially as research shows that people learn more in face to face and the students generally prefer to be taught in person.

      If we are going to do things online then let’s put our resources into creating good materials and doing a good job there. If face to face lectures are supposed to be the dominant medium of instruction then we should post of our resources there and make these as good as we can.

      I’ve spoken to many lecturers who teach in Europe (where they have the technology to record things) who are shocked to hear how students in Australia don’t turn up to lectures

  5. I suggest the tips for better lecture recordings can also make for a better experience in the classroom. As an example, it is a good idea to repeat questions asked, as it can be difficult for those in the room to hear a question, unless you pass a microphone around. Students can also have difficulty associating what you are presenting with course materials, so it is a good idea to explicitly refer to the relevant notes, textbook sections and assessment items.

    Jill pointed out that attendance can’t be an assessment component at ANU. . I would not want to make lecture attendance compulsory, as lectures (at least the old fashioned “talky” type) are the least useful campus activity for learning. I would prefer students come to workshops and tutorials and skip lectures, than attend lectures and skip the more interactive activities.

    Students, who have family, work or cultural commitments, health issues or disabilities, may not to be able to attend lectures. So making lectures compulsory would exclude these students from university, which I suggest would constitute unlawful discrimination.

  6. In principal Echo365 worked quite well.
    I had similar experiences with the laser pointer not being recorded. Most lecturers in our class would not handle the mouse or manage with a laser pointer that can move the mouse. Particularly the latter takes a bit more practice. Also the layout of our classroom is difficult. The computer screen is next to the large screen facing the audience. So lecturers have to speak either blind or turn halfway to the screen, i.e. away from the students, which is suboptimal, and they definitely would have to turn the back to the audience when moving a mouse on the screen. The students who did watch the recordings were not worried about seeing the pointer though. They thought the slides were understandable by listening to the audio. I still think in some instances pointing makes the message clearer.

    As to attendance, it is hard to judge. Some students have clashes with work or other classes. They say they benefit from the recordings greatly. I also think that it is great review material for preparing discussion sessions or exams. having said this, and having no hard evidence, attendance drops when students get overwhelmed by their workload about mid-semester. Also class time at 9 am has an influence. Some who tend to attend may not do so when recordings are available because it is hard to be motivated to get to early class on time, particularly in winter when it can be quite chilly. So there are lots of things that can influence attendance beyond whether lecture recordings are available. In summary, I believe that the benefits of recordings outweigh the attendance issue by far

    1. Hi Britta,
      Thanks for your comments. I can relate to what you are saying here. Students I previously worked with told me they were happy to pause and review/replay the recording if they needed to find the specific information I was referring to. But in a lecture, it is much harder to refer to details without using a pointer when you need to keep to time (also when the resolution of the screen is poor and students seem to get disoriented if you don’t guide them to the specific information). In terms of attendance, there are just too many factors that we can’t control. I was once told that 10am classes were too early! I’ve also been told that for students who are already reluctant to attend lectures, the recordings ‘deter’ them from showing up – so I guess we just have to pick and choose our battles.

  7. Thanks for the resources above, which offer some really useful tips for varying the way a lecturer can interact with students in the live lecture which may also be valuable for the recording auditors. I didn’t realise we could edit Echo 360 from our desktop – this will be very useful for eliminating the blank space when live lecture students are engaged in group activities among themselves before we share/discuss ideas. Thanks too for the suggestions across the last 5 days – i look forward to integrating some new techniques into my large classes.

  8. My own observation is also that lecture recordings don’t affect attendance rates very much. As one lecturer points out in the demo video, those who use recordings are the ones who actually come to lectures.

    I would much prefer lecture videos over recordings. Does Echo360 P-CAP allow for lecture video recording?

    A very good tip about speaking to two audiences was from a student, who asked me to always repeat the questions students ask (often they get lost in recordings). I think Tom’s posting also mentioned this point.

  9. I think the recordings are fantastic. I had students who expressed how useful these were when they were ill or had clashes with other courses. I haven’t really found it to impact lecture attendance – it’s just useful for those who are unable to attend for whatever reason. I also think it’s true that it gives students the opportunity to revisit key points. I also found it useful for self-reflection. I think the tips here on the invisible audience are really useful – it’s easy to forget about the students listening from elsewhere.

  10. We unfortunately do not yet have Wattle/Echo360 at UPNG. As I have mentioned, a number of students do record my lectures on their own devices – notably these students attend almost all lectures so it would be interesting to know whether they would still attend if we had access to Echo360 or similar lecture capture tools.
    Thank you

    1. Hi Tatia, that’s a great observation! I recall a course I worked on in the past that had a large number of students from non-English speaking backgrounds did the same thing – there were often 10-15 phones put up on the lectern to capture the audio.

  11. Thanks again for collating these very useful resources.

    And thanks Brian for alerting us to the one-button studio. I hadn’t heard about that initiative but it looks fantastic and very user friendly. I have some plans about using it already.

  12. I have been using Echo 360 for a number of years. I did not notice that a change in attendance. As one of the speakers in the video from Concordia said, students who are interested and eager to learn will listen to the recordings, regardless whether they attended the lecture or not, while less attentive students will not attend lectures but neither will they listen to recordings either.
    To include active learning in my lectures, in some lectures I provide sketches to students on Wattle (within the lecture notes or separately) that they are asked to print and bring to the lecture, where I’m using the document camera to identify and colour-in structures and students can work with me (I adapted this great activity from my colleague). I include these in my recording, so students listening through recording can also do the activities. Admittedly, it can be cumbersome when we can only record one screen, and I have to switch between ppt and doc camera during the lecture. I found it worked great in LT with 2 screens, when I could have the ppt on one screen and the doc camera on another, and when we were drawing/colouring, it was only a switch of a button to move the recording between two screens. This allows the students to see the concepts that I introduce in the lecture (ppt on screen 1), and apply it at the same time in drawing activity (doc camera on screen 2).
    To further facilitate (or encourage) students’ participation in learning, I create short videos which I try to keep at around 5 minutes long. These focus on particular concepts and provided prior to lecture, so that we can discuss more in-depth topics or solve problems in the lecture. I can also include these in a KuraCloud (or other e-learning platforms) session where I add quizzes through which students can check their understanding and receive instant feedback on their responses. At the moment, I’m producing my own short videos using my tabet creating Kahn style recordings, but I do like the idea of using ECHO360 recordings so I will try that in the future.

    1. Hi Krisztina, these are such fantastic ideas! Thanks for sharing them. How have you found the learning curve in terms of creating your own videos? When I am talking to academics they are often very interested in doing this as well, but are worried about the time it takes and how to get started. What has your experience been with this?

      1. I did start a bit slow, it took me 1 day to create my first video (which is not too much time considering how novel it was for me) and since then I can put together one short video in 1 hour or so. The most time I spent with is the editing (or rather waiting for the computer to ‘render’ my file, but yo can always read your emails, have a coffee while you wait).
        We now introduced video production in our undergraduate course as an assessment item. For students who are new to the technology, we run a workshop that takes 2 hours and by the end the students can create their first 1-minute video!!!!!

  13. I believe that lecture recordings do have a negative impact on class attendance. It has to. Offer an alternative to attendance which may lack some of the pedagogic benefits but offers convenience and flexibility surely some students will find that quite desirable. Imagine if the ANU did not have a mandatory lecture recording policy. Would you think that large enrolment lecture courses at the ANU would still have the 10-20% attendance that is often observed today? I think attendance would be much greater – perhaps not, say, the 50-70% attendance (I’m guessing here) before the introduction of lecture recording technology and mandatory recordings but not the largely empty lecture rooms of today.

    Lecture recordings do have their place and provide the benefits mentioned above. Nevertheless, there are downsides. I do find objectionable ANU’s policy of mandatory recordings and severe constraints on the ability of lecturers to deviate from what the University decides as best practice. For myself and given the courses I teach, I would record my lectures basically in line with ANU policies even if it wasn’t mandated. I do object to the University forcing academics to toe the line rather than to trust their judgement. (Apologies for pontificating but I had to get this off my chest.)

    1. Paul, you have some valid points there. I’m usually having problems with anything mandated if the reason is not explained clearly or there is no evidence for its necessity.
      I have to say, initially I was very worried that I will have to talk to empty lecture rooms because of the recordings, but the I realised, it was not the case, as there are many things you cannot capture in a recording. For example I gesticulate or mimic pathologies in my lectures and also use low-fidelity models that are not captured as they are not on the ppt slides. I also started to keep the Q&A parts of the lecture at the end and stopped the recording at that point….so many decided it is still worth coming to the live lecture.
      I also realised the importance of the recording when my own son started university to undertake a double degree, and was not able to attend 3 lectures/practicals/tutorials at the same time, as it was stipulated in his timetable. So there are genuine reasons for students not to attend. As I mentioned before, we do have student who would not attend with or without the recordings, but those usually don’t listen to the recordings anyway. So I think in the majority of cases only the diligent students benefit from the recordings and thus they deserve the opportunity.

    2. I agree with you Paul

      What I do find interesting is that the major reasons students cite for not turning up are:
      1) Clashing of timetable and
      2) Outside responsibilities.

      However, these issues have existed since well before lecture recording technology and students were able to manage these issues then. The students who genuinely listen to lectures because of language issues usually turn up anyway (they recognize that body language and the ability to ask questions live helps them learn) and so to those who go back to echo360 to review material (they recognize that listening to lecture material in person and then again on recording helps them to learn better)

  14. I had to have my classes recorded this year for the first time due to EAI requirements. I must admit, most of the time I forgot about it and that had the downside that I might access something on the computer while the students did an activity, which I might not have wanted to be necessarily available for public use later, not sure how to edit video, so some learning to do there. I also noted that one of the cameras was showing the class room upside down. As only a few students requested the recording I had very little use of it in the end, so no hotspots when looking at the usage…
    I also like to move around and found that this is an issue for students as student questions are often not recorded and my voice also was less easy to hear.
    Lots of great resources though, much to learn!
    Thanks

  15. Some great ideas to absorb here so thank you all. I struggle that, on one hand we have learnt about a range of techniques to engage students in face-to-face lectures, and then on the other hand we are encouraged to improve the recorded experience to accommodate today’s student. The two don’t seem entirely compatible to me because it seems that one needs to draw on different techniques, skills and technologies to deliver on each. I feel that we individually, and the university more broadly, are currently in a wrestling match over where our limited resources should be directed. My courses are a sort of hybrid beast at the moment.

  16. I have used Echo360. I wasn’t too crash hot for it, but that was 2 years ago. All these tips and suggestions are fantastic! Thank you everyone for sharing.

  17. In my discipline, painting, the Echo 360 recordings have been fantastic to show digital media resources such as online interviews with artists, interactive resources available for students on the iPad or smartphone and to allow my demonstrations of digital drawing processes to be accompanied by real time commentary.

    Often I use the lectures to provide context to and artist or artwork and so I find it valuable to be able to show the image of the artwork as large as possible without having to cram text onto the slide and diminish the scale of the image.

    I’ve prepared lectures with Echo 360 in mind, however, and it wasn’t working in the room that out class was booked for. The Lecture involved a long demonstration of navigating web searches to help equip students with methods for academic research on contemporary artists online. Because of the performative nature of this content in tandem with a class discussion, it was difficult to reproduce as a resource for Moodle without 360. Lesson learnt – find out in advance is Echo 360 will work in your room!

    1. Thanks Tony – its so great to hear about how you have used Echo 360 in your teaching – thank you for sharing with us!
      I too from firsthand experience have learnt to always check early that the technology actually works/is available when running a workshop/presentation.

  18. I think that the debate about whether lecture recordings are leading to increased absenteeism from lectures or not is fascinating. My understanding of the evidence is that the availability of recordings does not encourage people, who would have otherwise attended, to not attend. But equally the existence of recordings are unlikely to be listened to (at least in a timely way) by students who are habitually not attending. So overall I guess I think its a great option for the few students who have missed class because of a genuine issue, or students really looking to swot up, and so putting in effort for these students (like making sure student questions are repeated by the lecture to make sure they are recorded) is great. But I don’t think additional effort to really work on recordings is going to be what gets that group that just drop off after the first few weeks to engage…

  19. I just want to respond to the comments about the importance of repeating students’ questions so they are picked up by the mic. I’ve found this difficult to do satisfactorily in my small postgraduate course with mostly mature aged students because often the students are not asking a question so much as telling a relevant story from their professional life. These stories are often rich, nuanced and quite emotional. In this situation only a roving mic would really do justice to what the students are trying to share.

  20. I’ve used automatic screen capture during scheduled lectures as well as the personal screen capture (when I gave a presentation in a room that was not set up for Echo360). I find the platform really great and pretty simple to use.

    Do you think it does affect attendance to lectures?
    I’m not sure about this. I had 100% attendance at the assessed (practical) parts of my course this year, but regularly only ~15/25 students turned up to non-assessed lectures. As already mentioned, I think engaged students are likely to come to class anyway and non-engaged students might not bother with viewing lectures except for those around assessment. I was a pretty engaged student and I think I probably wouldn’t have skipped any classes, recorded or not. But, in the case of sickness, I might’ve felt a lot better about missing a class if I could go back and review it. However, also as an engaged student, I worry that having lectures to review adds an additional time burden to students who really feel like they have to complete all of the suggested readings etc., in a course. I can imagine that, had lecture recordings been available to me during undergrad, I probably would’ve spent that much longer studying for exams, feeling like I had to go over the recordings as well as the written material!

  21. My lectures are recorded automatically, but to be completely honest, I have never done any post-processing to improve the students’ watching experience. On the one hand, I use a sort of a flipped classroom, which means there’s a lot of small group discussion or demonstrations by the students, so Echo recordings are pretty much useless. On the other hand, I would like to make it the best experience possible for those attending, so if I have a choice between something that makes it a better f2f lecture or a better recorded lecture (like not standing behind the lectern), I will choose the former.

  22. I don’t mind the echo recordings, but really I do not use them as well as they can be used. More or less I use them on ‘set-and-forget’ and do not edit or adapt the videos in any way. I know that there is a lot more that can be done, and I think that I should be doing more with them, but as ever it is a question of time and commitments. Like some others, I have had problems with the technology, and although I am reasonably tech-literate, it can be very difficult to work out plan B’s when trying to start a lecture. I think the biggest problem with the way I have been using lecture recordings is that they are just 2-hour recordings of a lecture. There is too much information, it is too long, online students can’t participate in the interactive parts of the lecture, and the video doesn’t capture me, so there is no interaction. I can’t imagine that students want to watch the videos online over coming to lectures.

  23. What makes a good educational video? How is this different from (or similar to) lecture recordings?

    I’d say there’s more room to plan for educational videos. Lecture recordings are more “spontaneous” and would have a lot of unnecessary clips, not to mention would run for more than 30 minutes. But with instructional design and a bit (or more) of editing, a lecture recording can be “repurposed” as an educational video and can be an effective and valuable learning resource.

    I had an interesting conversation with an academic about lecture recordings. I mentioned that he should be mindful of the students who will listen to his lecture recordings but did not attend the live lecture. I talked about repeating questions from the audience which his lapel mic will not capture and describing or explaining items that he shows the class which are not being captured on film. Interestingly, he commented that, those are the experiences these students will miss for not attending, and that he is not going to make an extra effort for them. If they wanted the full experience, then they should not miss his lectures.

  24. I’m conflicted about lecture recordings. When I was an undergraduate last decade I always attended every lecture but often wished I could record them for revision or so I could go over parts I hadn’t understood. However, coming back to university as a lecturer from 2018, I was shocked to see how poor attendance is now compared to when I was a student. I have no doubt that this is owing to compulsory recording. Students last decade still had jobs, family responsibilities and clashes to deal with, as someone commented above. In any case, recording is here to stay, so I am trying to embrace it! I do wonder, though, how much longer we can justify even having live lectures at all if, as the argument seems to be, recordings are equal to them. Why not just record a bunch of lectures and upload them every year for the rest of your teaching career?
    Having now had my whine, I’ll get back to the topic. When lecturing, I get caught up in the moment and forget to do those considerate things like repeating questions. As a couple of others have commented, this is just good practice anyway. However, I really can’t imagine how I would ever find the time during the teaching periods to go back over the recordings and edit them. I did think that the suggestion of someone above, to use the recordings yourself to improve how you teach it next time, sounds like a good idea.

  25. I prefer the new ALP system which allows you to incorporate quizzes and activities into the presentation. I have found though that you need to be discriminative about when and where you use these as, like anything, students can become bored if they are overused. I am also trying to rethink how I use the lectures in flipped modes – eg. to introduce content, as a recap/summary of content to reinforce some of the key concepts or ideas, or to further explain or provide feedback on assessment. The lecture therefore is supplementary to the main online content.

  26. I know this is quite some time since the original discussion, but the content is still really valuable – thank you all for your comments, it’s quite helpful for me as I’m redesigning my teaching (having come back as a part-time lecturer 2 years ago for a third year UG course in computer science). I’ve also had a few discussions with other lecturers about how they found/used it, and had everything from ‘it just encourages their absence’ through to ‘the greatest educational tool ever’, and advice from ‘if the lecture/lecturer is not compelling then the recording is maybe a less painful way to learn’ (ouch!) through to ‘you can design your teaching to suit the recording, or even go to a flipped classroom approach’ – which I’d be open to. (A quick survey of my students though suggests they hate the flipped idea, so that needs a bit more thought. Perhaps another topic for this group?)

    I also wonder how sensitive the perspectives are to the discipline or degree, some are perhaps more/less suitable than others, or have students who are more/less comfortable with it? That could be quite interesting to explore.

    I just wanted to add (as I had responsibility for some of these discussions around 10-15 years ago) some things I’ve learnt:
    – in the early 1990’s around 5% of students worked a ‘significant’ amount (15-20hrs/wk). By the early 2000’s that figure had jumped to over 80%, and figures over 25hrs/wk were not uncommon. Cost of living (especially accommodation) increases was one aspect of that, demographics might be another. So I was quite comfortable that lecture recording would have benefits.
    – I wonder whether timetable clashes are increasing, due to more flexible pathways and multi-program degrees meaning the opportunities for clashes are greater. Somebody probably has the stats for that. Both my kids have done/are doing double degrees at ANU, and had a lot of schedule issues. And are regular users of the recordings.

    On the use of recordings, there are some really nice analytics in echo360, that I’ve used in some arguments. I had around 200 students in my course this year, and over the semester the attendance went from 70% down to around 15-20%. Checking the recordings use, I found that every lecture was accessed over 200 times – except my guest lectures – need to work on those… My record for one lecture was 420 times. You can also check access counts by students, and in my case around half had accessed on average every single lecture. I haven’t yet tried to correlate access counts with grades, but in theory I could do that. I’d also love to correlate attendance with grades, but I’m not keen on doing a roll call each lecture! 🙂

    The idea of access ranges from a sampling/segment-reviewing through to a full watching. For my lectures I found a consistent average of 42-53% of the recording was accessed for each lecture. I haven’t figured out the new version of the heatmap yet, would love any insights!

    I’m trying to learn more about learning, and teaching, and how technology helps and hinders, so really appreciate all the insights and experiences here. Hope the discussions continue!

    1. Hi Markus, really glad to hear you have found the course useful! I really appreciate your thoughtful comment about lecture recordings. I agree that timetable clashes are an increasingly common issue for ANU students, as you mention – in many cases, it is not physically possible for students to be at all their classes! There has been a wide-ranging volume of research on issues relating to lecture recording and attendance and correlations to grades, which I encourage you to take a look at. I particularly recommend French & Kennedy (2016): https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13562517.2016.1273213 Which we discussed in another post of this course (http://anuonline.weblogs.anu.edu.au/2017/06/28/day-1-the-role-of-the-lecture-in-contemporary-universities/) The full article is definitely worth a read if this is an area you are interested in.

      Looking forward to continuing the discussions as well, and thanks!

  27. I wasn’t aware I could edit my lecture recordings in Echo360 until recently so I have not tried this before. I can see that this could greatly improve their quality. I am a little concerned, however, that this could be rather time-consuming. This is particularly concerning for sessional academics who receive only very limited paid preparation time. I made several pre-recorded video lectures for online delivery and found that this was significantly more time consuming than a standard face-to-face lecture—not least because it was very tempting to try and edit out all mistakes or pauses to create a highly polished lecture.

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