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Notes from REC:all Lecture Capture

Tim O'Riordan on Tuesday 18 September 2012 Tweet this!

Although the technology that allows us to make video recordings of lectures available to our students online has been around for many years, it shows no sign of losing its 'hot topic' status - thanks largely to continuing improvements in tools, and debates surrounding opportunities to 'flip the classroom^'1. Extracting the most value from technologies to support teaching and learning is an important concern for educational practitioners faced with a diverse and growing array of tools, platforms and technologies and a vital part of the debate is centred on developing frameworks and guidance which provide clear and unambiguous pathways to good practice - something very close to our heart at JISC Digital Media.

A key player in this debate, the Recording and Augmenting Lectures for Learning project (REC:all), held a well-attended webinar ² earlier this month which set out their draft pedagogical framework for lecture capture (or 'weblectures'). Along with exploring the technological and legal aspects of weblectures, REC:all aims to develop tried and tested guidance for best practice in teaching and learning. They aim to challenge the notion of lecture capture as a passive technology, and encourage the integration of video technology to support learning on and off campus. The purpose is to develop shared designs and a shared vocabulary that will enable educators to enhance and share their practice more effectively.

The discussion kicked off with an outline of the thinking behind the current iteration of REC:all's draft pedagogical framework. This is based on a revised version of Blooms Taxonomy for the Cognitive Domain ³ which models the way students learn as an ever more sophisticated progression through six stages of learning. When applied to weblectures REC:all reduce these six to three main areas:

1. Remember and understand – knowledge transfer supported by basic uploads of, for example, recorded lectures to a VLE.

2. Apply and analyse - short knowledge clips (e.g. re-edited lectures, video clips, and screencasts) that use interactivity (e.g. tasks, quizzes or polls) that encourage learners to engage with their knowledge.

3. Evaluate and create - complex interactions (e.g. webinars, online tutorials and learner generated content) that require learners to take part in higher level activities.

While Bloom is a well-known, and used, educational model and can act as a good starting point for developing a shared vocabulary it does have some weaknesses. Learning does not progress in a linear fashion, and as webinar speaker and REC:all project leader, Clive Young (UCL) acknowledged, recent research ⁴ is showing that even the most simple online presentations of full lectures are being used by learners in sophisticated, interactive and creative ways. In addition, while helpful in explaining the learning process and very useful in assessing work, it does not show us how to achieve learning objectives, or how to use technology to achieve these effectively.

To answer the 'how' questions, the framework calls on the ‘Cone of Learning’ ⁵ (emphasising the value of active learning), the ‘Three I’s’ Framework ⁶ (emphasising the importance of interaction and the potential for learner input), and the outcomes of the Dutch/Belgium OASE ('weblectures for better learning') Project⁷ which emphasises the importance of embedding lecture capture into learning design and employing associated tools to augment the learner experience.

To illustrate how weblecture tools are being used effectively, recent examples were provided which demonstrated how good use of technology can have a remarkable impact on results. One, taken from an OASE-supported project, presented a learning plan that used simple lecture capture and screencast technology to achieve a 50% improvement in results for a course in statistics, and the I-Star Learning Project ⁸ at Tilburg University showed how the effective use of knowledge clips, webinars, online tests and live streaming helped to achieve a 30% improvement in results on an accountancy course for 1500 students.

The webinar concluded with a question and answer session that touched on opportunities for reflection, learners' views on flipped classroom and criteria for assessing technologies for learning.

The REC:all project is currently running a pilot of its draft framework and will disseminate outcomes later this year. They are very keen to receive feedback on what is working and what isn't working for teachers who integrate lecture capture and other video technologies into their learning environment.

References

. JISC CETIS, 2011. Can the flipped classroom disrupt the existing lecture-based teaching model in institutions? JISC CETIS Blog.  [Accessed: 18 September 2012]

. REC:all, 2012. The Pedagogy Framework. REC:all Webinar.  [Accessed: 18 September 2012]

. Wikipedia, 2012. Blooms Taxonomy. [Accessed: 18 September 2012]

. Pierre Gorissen, 2011. Analysing the use of recorded lectures by students. ALT-C 2011 Presentation. [Accessed: 18 September 2012]

. Tangient LLC , 2012. WikiClassroomTUD: Cone of Learning. [Accessed: 18 September 2012]

. Young, C and Asensio, M (2002) Looking through Three .I.s: the Pedagogic Use of streaming Video. In Banks, S, Goodyear, P, Hodgson, V and McConnell, D (eds), Networked Learning 2002, Sheffield, March. Conference Proceedings pp. 628-635  [Accessed: 18 September 2012]

. The SURF Foundation, 2012. The OASIS Project. (Dutch) [Accessed: 18 September 2012]

. i-Star Learning, 2012. What is i-star Learning? (Dutch)  [Accessed: 18 September 2012]