I just lead a small discussion for a few faculty and instructional technologists today over lunch about lecture capture what what would need to happen to get people to try it at Williams. I lead off with a quick slide show to define some terms and to provide some seed questions, then we just talked for about 30 minutes.  Here are the major points I took away from it:

• to make this work we need some way of recording stuff written on a board (we could maybe emulate that with a tablet, sympodium, or smart board, but that’s not ideal)
• the audio is important, but not the video of the talking head; point the camera somewhere more useful
• look into dual-camera systems instead of just camera-projector systems
• the non-fixed installation is better thought of as temporary / movable rather than truly mobile / portable (and, in general we need to find out more about the movable systems)
• some faculty are probably willing to try it at some point
• it might be a really good fit with tutorials for letting different sections see each other’s discussions
• the ability to jump to / find particular points in a lecture is very important and maybe needs to be improved
• some concern about students spending limited time re-listening to lectures rather than doing other course work

One of the big selling points seemed to be that people at other institutions were trying it and finding it useful. Here’s a set of links to some public info I found about that:

• http://www.wpi.edu/Academics/ATC/Collaboratory/News/lecturecapturing.html
• http://www.wpi.edu/Academics/ATC/Collaboratory/News/NERCOMPHandout.pdf
• http://www.echo360.tv/customers/umass.asp
• http://campustechnology.com/articles/52017/
• http://www.dartmouth.edu/~create/
• http://edc.carleton.ca/blog/index.php/2008/02/12/enhanced-lecture-podcasting-benefits/
• http://insidedigitalmedia.com/how-students-use-video-recordings-of-college-lectures-part-1-of-2/
• http://connect.educause.edu/Library/EDUCAUSE+Quarterly/LectureCaptureWhatCanBeAu/40028

The short summary of all those is:

• faculty and students who have tried a lecture capture system have liked it.
• students self-report that it helps their learning
• it has a positive impact on student grades, primarily helping the C and D students (it’s especially good for those who want to learn but are having difficulty with the material)
• there’s little solid data about attendance rates, but anecdotal observation and self-reporting suggest that, counter-intuitively, it’s largely or completely unaffected

Due to a relatively recent security hole in Adobe’s Flash Server 2 we had to upgrade the one driving our Echo360 (nee Apreso) system. It was a little scary to contemplate, but in fact went smoothly.

1. Downloaded the latest version Flash Media Streaming Server 3  from Adobe - Flashmedia3_Int_Strm_ALP.zip - it was a bit disconcerting since this is about 160 megs and the previous version was about 8, but it’s OK.
2. Ran a full back up of the host machine
3. Unpacked the FMS zip file
4. Ran the installer, accepting all the default choices and creating the same admin account and password as for the previous version (I don’t know if that’s strictly necessary, but seemed easiest)
5. Edited the server configuration file (C:\Program Files\Adobe\Flash Media Server 3\conf\fms.ini) to set the VHOST.APPSDIR property (our Echo360 streaming folder is on a different partition from the FMS install)
6. Restarted the FMS
7. Tested a previously recorded presentation and it worked.
8. Haven’t yet tried recording a new presentation, but given that the existing ones worked fine I don’t foresee any difficulties

We (Williams) have been experimenting lately with ‘automated’ classroom lecture capture, using the Echo360 tools. Lecture capture in this case means recording audio, video, and projected data of a presentation. The word automated is in quotes because it’s only automated from the perspective of the presenter. This system, like most (all?) others actually requires a fair bit of human work on the back end to make it seem automatic to the person actually giving the lecture. A person has to manually schedule the event and send that schedule to the machines that do the actual recording.

The Echo360 system has actually worked well, better than expected even. There are a lot of pieces in the process, and thus a lot of points of potential failure. Capture a single presentation involves these component all working correctly on their own and in conjunction with each other:

• manual scheduling (software and process)
• wireless, clip-on microphone
• video camera
• capture station - a special computer that does the actual recording and sends the result to the content manager
• content manager - a special server that manages the capture lectures
• Blackboard - our course system, on which recorded lectures are posted

That’s all in addition to the standard classroom technology (projector, speakers, lectern computers, media players). Even given all that, it works reliably fairly well for us (though it took a couple of months to smooth out the bugs). We’re now at a point where if we’re told someone wants to record a presentation in one of our three equipped rooms, we can make it happen and the resulting recording will posted to the appropriate course in Blackboard. From a technical standpoint, classroom capture is a success.

The only real problem we have with it at the moment is that none of the professors actually want to use it. There are three main objections that are raised. First, professors are concerned that if the lectures are recorded then students won’t bother actually showing up to class. Second, professors don’t like the idea of being recorded - it makes them uncomfortable. Third, professors don’t want to change their lecture styles to work better with the recording system - the video camera has a fixed mount, which means if the presenter wants to be recorded there’s a limited area they can use, and the camera is of a limited enough resolution that text written on a board is difficult to read (info sent through the projector works fine, but not everyone uses that).

I have no doubt that over time people will decide they do want to take advantage of this kind of system. Experience at other schools suggests that students, on the whole, do still come to class, and also get a lot out of the recordings. It’s especially useful in situations where the student is still struggling with the language being used to teach (either a foreign student, or a class taught in a different language). It’s also a handy way an instructor can see themselves teach - it provides a useful, objective feedback mechanism.

If anyone else is thinking about implementing such a system my advice is to get people committed to using it, at least some of the time, before going through the time and effort and expense of installing it. If anyone’s interested I can provide more detailed information about our install process and the parts and skills needed to make it all work.