10 years ago a man by the name of Ian Jukes inspired me
with the phrase “Are we preparing students for their future or our past?” Since that time, I have worked tirelessly to
put educational technology tools in the hands of the trailblazers and help the resistant to
convert to be advocates for change. At our school, Academic Technology Services has led many initiatives to ensure that student learning experiences become more personalized. One such initiative was Lecture Capture and Retrieval.
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| Figure 1 - Lecture Capture |
Lecture Capture and
Retrieval:
There are many vendors who deliver solutions for lecture capture. I found that Tegrity was the best and most robust product on the market that offers the best experience for the students with the easiest interface for faculty to use.
Tegrity allows for keyword searching and mobile device
viewing (portability) thus allowing students to put their professor in their
pockets. This is a growing trend and I’m
hopeful that a video is getting lighter (in size) and cloud services (like
Tegrity) are become more and more cost effective this trend will allow the
distance education student a similar experience to the face-to-face
learner. Allowing for the Visualization
that students and information searching that students need in today’s
world. They want to know what they want
to know. And being able to search a
lecture after it is over by keyword gives them the study tool they desire.
Why would any instructor want to record their lectures? Wouldn't that encourage students to skip class... NOT HARDLY....!
In a recent vodcast by José Bowen, dean of the Meadows School of the Arts at Southern Methodist University, he challenges instructors to think outside the box when it comes to lecture capture.
Lecturing is simply delivering delivery, and not much different from reading a textbook in this regard. If so, then why must lectures be held in class? An instructor could just as easily record his or her lectures and put them online for students to view at their leisure. Better yet, the time freed up from delivering the same lectures year after year, course after course, could be spent putting together rich multimedia content that combines narrated PowerPoints, podcasts, Prezis, videos, VoiceThreads, etc.
In fact, why should faculty create their own lectures at all? Bowen notes that our system of faculty creating their own lectures is a bit like having every instructor write his or her own textbook. If faculty wrote all of their own textbooks, most textbooks would be terrible. Why not just use the best lectures that have been posted on iTunesU, TED, etc. for content?
I tell faculty that their real value is not the information stored in their head. After all, nearly all of that information is publicly available in books or journals. A faculty member’s real value is in their interaction with students. The back and forth with students in discussion, or commentary on their assignments to improve their writing, for example, is what gives them value. Faculty should focus on this aspect of their teaching and automate as much as possible the simple content delivery part. Yet most faculty have it backwards—clinging to their lectures as their most important function.
Paradigm Shift
Teachers can test the waters of Bowen’s teaching model by putting one or two of their lectures online and devoting the subsequent class to discussion of the topics in those lectures. I’ve done this with wonderful results. But the secret is to avoid the all-too-easy mistake of falling back into lecturing during class time. As faculty, we think that lecturing is our primary duty, and it is hard to break ourselves of this habit.
One option is to assign students to come to class with one question about the lecture content written on a sheet of paper that the instructor collects to initiate discussion. To avoid embarrassment, have the students crumple up their sheets at the beginning of class and throw them around the room for 30 seconds. Then have each student pick up one of the pieces and start reading them in order to guide discussion.
Lecture sitesWhy would any instructor want to record their lectures? Wouldn't that encourage students to skip class... NOT HARDLY....!
In a recent vodcast by José Bowen, dean of the Meadows School of the Arts at Southern Methodist University, he challenges instructors to think outside the box when it comes to lecture capture.
Lecturing is simply delivering delivery, and not much different from reading a textbook in this regard. If so, then why must lectures be held in class? An instructor could just as easily record his or her lectures and put them online for students to view at their leisure. Better yet, the time freed up from delivering the same lectures year after year, course after course, could be spent putting together rich multimedia content that combines narrated PowerPoints, podcasts, Prezis, videos, VoiceThreads, etc.
In fact, why should faculty create their own lectures at all? Bowen notes that our system of faculty creating their own lectures is a bit like having every instructor write his or her own textbook. If faculty wrote all of their own textbooks, most textbooks would be terrible. Why not just use the best lectures that have been posted on iTunesU, TED, etc. for content?
I tell faculty that their real value is not the information stored in their head. After all, nearly all of that information is publicly available in books or journals. A faculty member’s real value is in their interaction with students. The back and forth with students in discussion, or commentary on their assignments to improve their writing, for example, is what gives them value. Faculty should focus on this aspect of their teaching and automate as much as possible the simple content delivery part. Yet most faculty have it backwards—clinging to their lectures as their most important function.
Paradigm Shift
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| Figure 2 - Paradigm Shift... |
Teachers can test the waters of Bowen’s teaching model by putting one or two of their lectures online and devoting the subsequent class to discussion of the topics in those lectures. I’ve done this with wonderful results. But the secret is to avoid the all-too-easy mistake of falling back into lecturing during class time. As faculty, we think that lecturing is our primary duty, and it is hard to break ourselves of this habit.
One option is to assign students to come to class with one question about the lecture content written on a sheet of paper that the instructor collects to initiate discussion. To avoid embarrassment, have the students crumple up their sheets at the beginning of class and throw them around the room for 30 seconds. Then have each student pick up one of the pieces and start reading them in order to guide discussion.
TED—Wonderful compilation of short lectures on interesting topics. http://www.ted.com/
Free Video Lectures—over 18,000 free lectures. http://freevideolectures.com/
Video Lectures—Great lecture exchange site. http://videolectures.net/
iTunesU—Must download the player to access the lectures. http://www.apple.com/education/ipodtouch-iphone/
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