April 6, 2015, by Teaching at Nottingham

Lecture capture in the School of Contemporary Chinese Studies

In conversation with Professor Steve Tsang and Dr Jing Zhang

Steve:

“I think that there are several dimensions about lecture capture… there are always a few students who cannot attend a particular lecture, and having the lecture captured and available can be very helpful to them. There are also, occasionally, a few students who may find it difficult to follow the lectures and want to get back to a specific part of a lecture where there are issues that they want greater clarity on.”

Jing:

“Sarah Speight and the TTP team advised us that students would benefit from reviewing the clips time and time again and it can also help the outcomes of learning. Particularly the marks of some students who could be borderline or from 2:2 to 2:1.”

Steve:

“It can also be used for staff development and for self-improvement… We have got very, very good lecturers at this school who are all, in their own particular way, extremely effective communicators and teachers, but we can all do a little bit better. Nobody has finished learning and it is a good message to put across to our students that we, as teachers, are also learning. That we, as teachers, are also looking at continuous improvement.”

“I think for this particular school, one thing I would be interested in looking at is to have very short clips of specific lectures on a specific subject related to China which we can put on our website for a wider audience…those are the sorts of things that can be quite useful with China becoming a subject that many people are interested in. We have the expertise, we can reach out to a much wider audience and we can also, hopefully, through that process, encourage more students thinking about a university education to look at us as a place that they may like to join.”

Jing:

“The first time we formally introduced this lecture capture to our staff members was after the first meeting of the Teaching Transformation Programme…Some of our colleagues had experience using it… Some felt uncomfortable about recording their voice and the images, and also other concerns about copyright or misuse of the videos…because once it has been taken away and is being used by a colleague 5000 miles away, how that is being presented may not be something you are comfortable with.”

“There are also some concerns about the limitations; for example, many of our lecturers prefer more interactive teaching with the students during the lecture, rather than only listening to what has been recorded. In this case it is not appropriate to record the entire lecture and it would be difficult to make the student engage with the class.”

Steve:

“[The Teaching Transformation Programme offers] technical expertise and support; because you will be doing it as a whole school and with colleagues from across the University you know about all the problems, pitfalls and good practices…So we can actually see that, learn that and avoid mistakes to begin with…That would save time and that type of assistance would be helpful.”

“The reality is that when people are already running a marathon, adding that extra mile is something that has to be planned for with support being given.”

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