E-Learning with Camtasia Studio

November 26, 2014 at 4:36 pm | Posted in lecture recording, software | Leave a comment

E-Learning with Camtasia Studio book coverI’ve been a fan of Camtasia for some years now, and this screen recording/video editing software has been the subject of several posts on this blog, so I wasn’t too surprised when I was approached by Packt Publishing to review their ebook E-Learning with Camtasia Studio. Weighing in at 188 pages, it turned out to be a really useful introduction to the thinking, processes and planning required for almost any multimedia learning/training resource, as well as covering Camtasia-specific features. The author, David B. Demyan has obviously has a great deal of practical experience in using Camtasia to produce interactive learning and communicates this clearly in his writing.

As mentioned, a significant portion of the book is devoted to non-technical but essential issues, from establishing the learning outcomes and the learner profiles to planning, scripting and storyboarding. It goes on to cover the essentials of creating and editing using Camtasia – introducing each of the key features (such as pan-and-zoom) without un-necessary detail of every option. This is a good thing as there are plenty of other online resources including the TechSmith website that provide that level of detail. What is really useful and new, however, are the chapters on the addition of interactive features (hotspots, quizzes) and the integration with learning management systems using SCORM. Even if you already know Camtasia, you will probably find that these sections alone justify the modest cost. The e-book comes with a ZIP file of sample files that you can download so that you can follow through the exercises and example production – and this includes all the planning documents as well as the media files. Recommended.

Packt Publishing offer two further books on Camtasia by different authors – one on Advanced Editing and Publishing and another on Building an E-Learning Course with Camtasia Studio – and the latter seems to broadly cover the same material.

I’ve also been a long-time subscriber to Daniel Park’s helpful emails about Camtasia from dappertext.com, although I never got around to buying his well reviewed (but more expensive) Camtasia Guide. Prompted by writing this review, and looking through the sample chapters Daniel provides, I think that the book reviewed above is not as comprehensive, but provides better coverage of the topics it does include – and the example project management files are  the icing on the cake.

UCU wary of lecture capture

June 11, 2012 at 1:38 pm | Posted in lecture recording | 2 Comments

The University and College Union (UCU), which represents many academics in HE, passed a motion (HE43) at their recent HE sector conference that expresses some of the anxieties that surround lecture capture. These include questions about the pedagogical value of recorded lectures and a fear that the technology will support the marketisation of education by enabling lectures to be franchised or sold.

The resolutions are actually quite useful, and I hope that the UCU co-opts people with real expertise and understanding to help carry them through. The resolutions are:

a. to support staff who refuse to have their lectures recorded.

This resolution was remitted (kicked into the long grass). My view is that no-one should be forced to record their lectures. Faculties may try to persuade those who don’t want to, but there may be good pedagogical reasons against it. However, there are also issues such as equality and accessibility (for example by dyslexic students) which mean that ‘because I don’t want to’ is not a good enough reason to refuse.

b. that universities should not be creating expectations that all lectures will be recorded.

I think it is student expectations that will be the key driver here, and that use will grow organically over time. The infrastructure required to record every lecture is huge, and institutions want to be convinced of the benefits as they invest.

c. to provide materials with advice on the issues of performance rights, copyrighted materials used in lectures, and intellectual property rights regarding the future use of a lecture.

JISC Legal have already produced a handy guide on this, and institutions will produce their own guidance. I think UCU should encourage a model in which academics licence their institution to freely use their content internally. However, franchising or selling that content would fall outside the licence and would require the institution to gain further permission.

d. to provide materials indicating the pedagogical value of recorded lecture materials.

I think these ought to go beyond an outline of the benefits (and potential pitfalls) of recorded lectures and encourage academics to see pre-recorded content as a technique to redesign the delivery of their courses, move didactic material online and create more time for face-to-face interactivity and discussion.

When it comes to issues of marketisation, I think that UCU seems ill-informed if it thinks institutions will be able to sell recorded lectures unless they are of the highest quality (both production values and content). There is so much excellent free material already available on YouTube, iTunes U and elsewhere that charging for a simple lecture recording is just laughable.

Students’ first thoughts about lecture capture

July 25, 2011 at 4:18 pm | Posted in lecture recording | Leave a comment
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Back at the start of July, I went to see Sasha Watson, the new VP Academic Affairs for SUSU, to talk about the Panopto pilot project. He was enthusiastic about the idea of lecture capture and could see it being used by the union to create their own quick-and-dirty video podcasts (they have a great video team who produce properly edited videos).

He produced his own introduction to lecture capture using Panopto and made it available via the SUSU website, asking for comments and feedback. Quite a few of the responses were concerned about the impact on attendance – especially 9am lectures. My own view is that they might skip that lecture *once* and try watching the recording later… before realising that staying focused on a recording is much harder work. Still, take a look at their comments and see what you think.

A wealth of links to articles about lecture capture

June 29, 2011 at 8:31 am | Posted in lecture recording, useful links | Leave a comment

John Couperthwaite of the University of Birmingham has kindly made available his extensive collection of links to articles about the use of lecture capture, including plenty of research papers and case studies. There are currently 63 links, so its going to take me a while to read my way through these!

The Student View of Blended Learning

June 14, 2011 at 10:55 am | Posted in lecture recording | Leave a comment
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This is the title of a report comissioned by Echo360, who produce one of the leading lecture capture systems used in Higher Education. It details the results of a survey of 1746 students from 16 US and one UK institution (Nottingham), of whom 1566 used recorded lectures as part of a blended learning approach.

Students were asked to choose their top three benefits of recorded lectures, and the results mirrored those from other studies: reviewing material from class, preparing for exams, clarifying confusing topics and supporting independent learning. This isn’t the whole story though, as 41 students used them to help them manage a disability or medical condition, and 24 to cope with language differences.

More controversially, 320 students (20%) picked ‘substituting attending class’ as one of their top three benefits. While some of those are associated with unavoidable absence (illness etc.) 13% of students missed five or more classes, with 95% of those said they used lecture recordings to catch up.

The most unexpected result of the survey (but good for companies like Echo360 and Panopto) is that 67% of ‘high-usage’ students and 44% of all students ranked ‘lecture capture’ as a “very important” learning resource with the next highest being 46%/38% for ‘course management system’ (e.g. Blackboard). Finally, 84% of the students said ‘yes’ when asked “Would you like to see lecture capture in more of your courses?”.

You can download the full report (14 pages) from the Echo360 website.

JISClegal podcasts about Recording Lectures and Screencasts

June 9, 2011 at 3:45 pm | Posted in lecture recording | 2 Comments
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JISClegal have released a series of seven short videos, orginally presented as a live webcast. They cover the legal, technical and accessibility issues, and include an instructional ‘How To’ segment, panel discussion and Q&A with experts from JISC Legal, JISC Digital Media and JISC Techdis.

Part 1 – Introduction (8 mins)

Part 2 -Basic Recording Tips (4 mins)

Part 3 -Preparing to Record (32 mins)

Part 4 – Your Questions Answered (12 mins)

Part 5 -Making a Recording (16 mins)

Part 6 -Making the Recording Available (16 mins)

Part 7 – Final Questions (10 mins)

Do students value lecture capture?

May 23, 2011 at 1:00 pm | Posted in lecture recording | Leave a comment
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Not if they thought they might have to pay extra for it,  according to a study published in the Australasian Journal of Educational Technology (Students’ satisfaction and valuation of web-based lecture recording technologies. Ross H. Taplin, Lee Hun Low and Alistair M. Brown).

In this study, 71% of the students who responded would not pay anything for recordings, even though 47% said that the recordings ‘made it easier for them to learn’. It also seems that results were highly polarised so that many students either ‘strongly agreed’ or ‘strongly disagreed’. “Further research is necessary to identify more carefully the students who value WBLT highly, and whether the gain to these students warrants widespread use of WBLT.” The argument here is about cost, and whether lecture capture offers value for money, and not about the educational gains it offers.

A major difference between the Australian study and the Panopto trial at Southampton is the system used. They use the hardware-based iLecture system that apparently costs around A$150 per lecture, wheras Panopto is a software solution that should cost significantly less once it moves beyond the pilot phase and is more widely used. We are gathering data here to support a move from pilot to full service, and cost will be a significant factor.


Identifying sustainable strategies for the implementation of lecture capture technologies

March 23, 2011 at 4:22 pm | Posted in lecture recording | 2 Comments
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This is the title of a comprehensive report put together by Dr John Couperthwaite of the University of Birmingham. He was fortunate to gain some funding from the Universitas21 initiative which enabled him to visit and learn from Australian universities that have been using lecture capture for some years. He has used the insights gained to create a comprehensive list of recommendations for the introduction of an institutional lecture capture system, and it is interesting to compare these with the process adopted by Southampton. Overall, I feel our approach has been more exploratory and less prescriptive, as befits a pilot project as opposed to a strategic initiative, but I am reassured that we have considered and addressed the majority of the recommendations he lists.

The University of Birmingham Event Capture website can be compared with our own Panopto support website. Viewing their tutorial videos, two things struck me – first, how much I prefer narrated video to material produced using Adobe Captivate (the fake typing sound really annoys me) and secondly, how much easier the Panopto integration with Blackboard makes the whole process; Birmingham uses WebCT and so tutors need to manually copy-and-paste links from the Panopto server to WebCT items. They are also trialing Echo360, which does offer good integration with WebCT, so that may well clinch their final choice.

Panopto tutorial on offline recording

March 21, 2011 at 11:30 am | Posted in lecture recording | Leave a comment
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One of the pilot Panopto users encountered this worrying error message last week when she completed a recording:

All that had happened was that the wi-fi connection she used to log in and start a recording dropped, so the Recorder was unable to upload the files to the server. All we had to to do was close this error message by clicking Cancel, close the Panopto Recorder and upload the recording when she got back to her office.

This minor panic prompted me to produce another tutorial video that shows how to create recordings offline (i.e. where there is no internet access) and how to upload them later when you are online. Typical situations might include:

  • rooms without a network connection (or where it is broken, which happened to me last week);
  • rooms away from the University where there is no network, or you don’t have an account to access it;
  • field trips, boats and other remote locations.

This ability to create recordings offline is a really useful feature of Panopto and will enable the University to create ad-hoc recordings wherever it wishes. For example an academic giving a guest lecture at another University will be able to capture their talk and make it available to students here, or a researcher on a ship in the Arctic will be able to use a good quality webcam to show students what working in those conditions is really like.

More Tutorial Videos about Panopto

March 14, 2011 at 12:11 pm | Posted in lecture recording | Leave a comment
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I’ve just revamped the Panopto support pages on the iSolutions website, and  there are now many more short tutorial videos that show tutors how to make best use of the system:

  • how to edit recordings,
  • how to control access to them,
  • the legal issues you need to consider, such as copyright.

There are also videos aimed at students – there is one that provides a general introduction to Panopto and another that shows them how to access the podcast versions.

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