Category: lecture

There is hope for me yet …

~ Matthew Allen ~ 1 Comment
A reely intersting picture !
cc licensed flickr photo by RuffLife: http://flickr.com/photos/rufflife/5107716980/

My Dad used to have one of these old reel to reel tape recorders. He had it all set up so he could record himself “murdering” (his word) on the piano whichever bit of popular easy listening had taken his fancy most recently. He was / still is actually pretty good, not that you can ever persuade him of the fact …

One day, many years ago, he recorded me reading something or the other out loud (the exact details are lost in the mists of time) and then played it back to me. I was absolutely horrified at the sound of my own voice ! To hear myself as others must have heard me ! I didn’t want to speak again for about a month ! I sounded so dozy and absolutely nothing like my own impression of what I sounded like. As a result of that single event, I now avoid being recorded like the plague, either audio or video. I did have to be recorded a bit during my teacher training (video) and I hated every minute of it – even though I found it very useful …

Still … I digress …

Lecture capture is one of those things that rears its head occasionally and then, like Nessy, vanishes back under the surface with barely a ripple, to rear again another day.

Many people hate the idea:

  • Some worry they’ll get all camera shy and look daft.  Why you’d worry about a camera when standing up and talking in front of 200 people, I don’t really know … but it takes all sorts I guess !
  • Others take the attitude that the lecture is an outdated, ineffectual artifact from a bygone age and has been superseded by other teaching methods, so why bother capturing it !  Their rather vitriolic sentiment … not necessarily mine.
  • Some get all excited about their intellectual property being captured in the lecture.
    (“excited” and “intellectual property” – not often seen in the same sentence …)
  • Some just feel it is generally pointless and the time and energy expended on it would be better spent elsewhere.
  • And of course … nearly everyone frets that if they record their lectures, then no students will actually turn up to experience them “live”.  They’ll all watch lounging round in their pyjamas at home, in between repeat episodes of “In the Night Garden” and “Waybuloo” while eating Twiglets … or something …

This post however, on one of Donald Clark’s many blogs, brings a study clearly showing that students gain from the use of lecture capture to our attention. Have a look at it.

(I think Mr Clark falls clearly into at least one of the bullet pointed camps above, but don’t hold that against him.  He’s a learning technologist.)

Point seven looks especially interesting to me.  I wonder if Media Services could edit my two hours of anecdote filled rambling down to a slick 15 minutes of professionally delivered content ?

Lecture capture is potentially on the way.  Perhaps we have to learn to embrace it and make it beautiful, before it gets here.

JISC lecture capture and screen cast tips

~ Matthew Allen ~ Leave a comment
I'm ready for my close up now Mr De Mille ...
cc licensed flickr photo by kqedquest: http://flickr.com/photos/kqedquest/512777395/

JISC have produced this useful set of videos looking at recording lectures and screen casts (including some advice on the legal aspects – did you know there were any ?). I’ve heard several people talking about such things recently, so perhaps this is timely …

They are gathered together here:

http://telic.wordpress.com/2011/06/09/jisclegal-podcasts-about-recording-lectures-and-screencasts/

Confessions of a Converted Lecturer: Eric Mazur

~ Chris Jobling ~ Leave a comment

Last week, Paul Lattreille lead a SALT Seminar on Teaching Large Groups. I’m hoping someone from this community will report on that session in more detail, but as an appetizer here’s a talk by Harvard Physics Professor Eric Mazur, that gives some justification for one of the ideas, Peer Instruction, that Paul shared with us on that day. It was recorded at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC). I hope that, like me, you’ll find it inspirational and worth passing on. I’ve just ordered Erik’s book Peer Instruction a User’s Manual (Prentice Hall, 1996) because, unfortunately, there isn’t a copy in the Library!

Here are some questions to test your understanding of the talk.

  1. What is a lecture really about?
  2. What is Eric’s recommended structure for a “lecture”?
  3. What level of improvement can you achieve by using peer instruction rather than traditional lectures?
  4. If you use Peer Instruction, how could you gather evidence that peer instruction is working for you?

Incidentally, thanks for Paul for sharing this video via Twitter. More gems from the SALT community are to be found in the sidebar at the right.

Student Centred Lecturing ?

~ Matthew Allen ~ 2 Comments

During a Lunch and Learn session I was doing on Planning and Integrating E-Learning, I mentioned demonstrating and if you were going to do a demonstration you could consider videoing it and uploading the resulting movie for students to access either at their leisure or in future years so you didn’t have to repeat the demonstration (unless you really wanted to !)

This then provoked discussion on video in general and how effective it was in getting the point across. For example videoing your own lectures and making them available on a streaming server, or videoing yourself doing worked solutions of maths problems. I only really had anecdotal evidence to back up my very strongly held view that it can be very effective (as long as it is done right – which sadly, much of it isn’t), until now.

Deb Lewis of Business and Economics (one of the people most immediately interested in the matter – I think) was looking for something else a few days later and came across this page from the University of Toronto Scarborough.

It describes a new approach they are trying with some courses where the lecture component is offered in the traditional turn up, sit down and listen format but also in an online version. Lectures are filmed as they take place and are quickly uploaded to a streaming server for students to access as they wish. This gives the students the option of attending the physical lecture as it is delivered or they can access the online version whenever it is convenient for them to do so.

To quote from the site:

“While the concept is simple, its implementation has lead to benefits at virtually all levels within the university. Most importantly, the students love the flexibility this option provides both in terms of scheduling but also in terms of allowing them to get more out of the lectures. That is, many students welcome the ability to (a) watch lectures when they are feel alert, (b) control the local distractions that cannot be controlled in a traditional lecture setting, and (c) pause and rewind lectures during their presentation. In fact two thirds of the students we have been surveyed feel that watching lectures online provides a superior learning experience“

They later go on to hail it as “a fantastic success that truly has changed the way we offer post-secondary education at the University of Toronto at Scarborough” and state that its annual growth is fueled by student demand.

This is an excellent example of how a more student centred approach can really pay off. The old chestnut concern of “if I provide my lecture notes and PowerPoints on Blackboard then none of the students will turn up. Maybe if you provide the whole experience (notes, PowerPoints and a video of the actual lecture) it won’t really matter if they turn up or not !