Students may need guidance from staff about using Re:View effectively; it may be the first time they have had recorded content made available in such a way during their education. It can be tempting to try to recreate the in-room lecture format online, but it is unlikely that students will watch back whole lectures. Where lecture capture is already in use, students instead prefer to use recordings to clarify key points and as revision aid around exam periods. In creating video resources, keep in mind some guiding principles:

• Chunk large lectures into smaller recordings.

  What’s the Use of Lectures? (Bligh, 2000),  Teaching Tips (McKeachie, 2002), and How the Brain Learns (Sousa, 2006), all advise that students’ attention spans decrease after a short time and recommend breaking up lectures into 10-to-15- minute sections, while recent research suggests that student attention spans may be shorter for online videos (Szpunar, Moulton, & Schacter, 2013)

• Intersperse recordings with different teaching activities.
  

  This can foster and maintain engagement since “deliberate variations had the effect of postponing or even eliminating the occurrence of an attention break” (p. 50). (Johnstone and Percival, 1976).

• Usual visual resources strategically. 

  If used appropriately visuals can complement verbal instruction, but it's important to avoid cognitive overload which occurs when “the processing demands evoked by the learning task may exceed the processing capacity of the cognitive system” (Mayer & Moreno, 2003, p. 45). Simple strategies for success include limiting text and removing extraneous content and using only keywords and images that reinforce verbal instruction.

• Incorporate active learning techniques.
  

  Popular approaches include assigning students learning activities or discussion questions to complete while watching a video lecture (M. Kim, Kim, Khera, & Getman, 2014). Note taking during lectures also significantly improves student achievement, even if students never use their notes to study (Kiewra, 1985). To help hold students accountable for note taking while watching video lectures, some instructors require students to submit their notes or a written summary of the lecture (Bergmann & Sams, 2012).

• Embrace assessment for learning. 

  By interspersing lecture videos with discussion questions or providing quiz questions for students after they watch video lectures, both students and instructors obtain a better idea of what students learned (Szpunar, Jing, & Schacter, 2014). In addition, a 2012 Harvard University study analyzing cumulative exams found that students who viewed online lectures with embedded quiz questions outperformed students who viewed online lectures without them (Szpunar, Khan, & Schacter, 2013). Research also shows that including quiz questions increases student note-taking, further reinforcing learning.

• Know the essentials of video production.
  

  It's not necessary to spend lots of time and money to make a pedagogically valuable video: a 2014 study evaluating 6.9 million video-watching sessions across four courses on the edX MOOC platform found that informal talking-head videos were more engaging for students than big-budget studio production videos (Guo et al., 2014). It is however important to get some aspects of video delivery right. Before recording develop a script or storyboard, choose key images and organise your material. Research suggests that students are more engaged when instructors maintain a normal speaking pace and display enthusiasm for the content (Guo et al., 2014). Avoid poor lighting, distracting backgrounds, and (not so easy I know if you have children running around at home currently!) distracting background noises.

• Remember Accessibility.

  Choose colours with high contrast for visuals and use captioning (which enhances recordings for all users). Remember that Re:View can help to provide automatic captioning (although it is usually not 100% accurate, so will need checking.

For more on these principles, please see 'Now Streaming: Strategies that improve video lectures'

Pros

• It can make learning accessible to students with learning difficulties, disabilities, or English as an additional language. A recorded lecture may be a ‘reasonable adjustment’ under the Equality Act (2010).
• Lecture capture enables students to clarify key points from lectures and enhance their note-taking.
• Students may use lecture capture for revision.
• Students can view recordings wherever they have an internet connection.
• Staff can ‘flip the classroom’ and create content in locations aside from traditional lectures.
• Staff can edit lecture footage and enhance it with other media such as quizzes.
• Staff can view statistics about how students are engaging with recorded content.

Cons

• Attendance at lectures may drop if students know that the lecture will be recorded (although most evidence seems to suggest that the effect of lecture capture on attendance is negligible).
• Staff need to be aware of what exactly is being recorded, and who can access it.
• There may be copyright issues if staff are using other media in their lecture (please see our advice on copyright implications for lecture capture).
• Students and staff may be concerned about taking part in discussions or asking questions if they are being recorded (you can, however, pause recordings and/or edit them afterwards).
• There may be an additional amount of time invested and technical proficiency needed to produce desktop or mobile recordings for ‘flipped classroom’ delivery.

Dr Steve Cayzer, Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Bath discusses assessment of student presentations using lecture capture.

Lecture capture of students' presentations from Learning & Teaching, Bath on Vimeo.

Dr Christopher Pudney, Department of Biology and Biochemistry, University of Bath discusses lecture capture.

Experience of lecture capture from Learning & Teaching, Bath on Vimeo.

Annabel Cartwright, School of Physics and Astronomy, Cardiff University discusses embedding lecture capture within a module.

Further reading

Detailed guidance on considerations for using lecture recording in teaching and learning at the University of Bath.

References

Bollmeier, S.G., Wenger, P.J., Forinash, A.B., 2010. Impact of Online Lecture-capture on Student Outcomes in a Therapeutics Course. Am J Pharm Educ 74, 127.

Chandra, S., 2011. Experiences in Personal Lecture Video Capture. IEEE Transactions on Learning Technologies 4, 261–274.

Dona, K.L., Gregory, J., Pechenkina, E., 2017. Lecture-recording technology in higher education: Exploring lecturer and student views across the disciplines. Australasian Journal of Educational Technology 33.

Edwards, M.R., Clinton, M.E., 2018. A study exploring the impact of lecture capture availability and lecture capture usage on student attendance and attainment. High Educ.

Inman, J. and Myers, S. 'Now Streaming: Strategies that improve video lectures', IDEA Paper #68, Temple University, March 2018.

JIPFHE.ISSUE-9.1-Winter-2017.pdf, n.d.

Lowe, T., Mestel, B., Williams, G., 2016. Perceptions of online tutorials for distance learning in mathematics and computing. 1 24. 

Nordmann, E., Kuepper-Tetzel, C.E., Robson, L., Phillipson, S., Lipan, G., Mcgeorge, P., n.d. Lecture capture: Practical recommendations for students and lecturers. 

Nordmann, Emily ; Calder, Colin ; Bishop, Paul ; Irwin, Amy ; Comber, Darren., Turn up, tune in, don’t drop out: the relationship between lecture attendance, use of lecture recordings, and achievement at different levels of study Higher Education, Nov 2018, pp.1-20

Witton, G., 2017. The value of capture: Taking an alternative approach to using lecture capture technologies for increased impact on student learning and engagement. British Journal of Educational Technology 48, 1010–1019.