ReView (powered by Panopto) allows lectures and teaching sessions taking place in equipped rooms to be recorded and then accessed by students at a later date through Blackboard. Recorded sessions can include seminars, tutorials, laboratory sessions and practice-based sessions as well as the more traditional lectures. The same ReView system also allows a wide range of learning and teaching materials to be recorded, which can provide additional resources for students, and it can also be used to ‘flip the classroom’, allowing materials normally covered in face-to-face sessions to be recorded and presented in advance. Students can then view these materials ahead of the scheduled lecture, allowing the lecture time to be freed up for more exercises, projects, and/or discussions around the material. A blog post produced by the Learning and Teaching Enhancement Team within Academic Registry (LTE) highlights some of the benefits of using video in learning and teaching, and provides a good background as to the motivations of rolling out ReView across Teesside University. The post, entitled Why Use Video in Your Learning and Teaching can be accessed here.
ReView was made available across Teesside University on 1st September 2016, between that date and 10th May 2017 (the time of writing of this post), 1,286 video recordings were created using the system. In that same period, videos recorded and stored in ReView were accessed 27,416 times. These initial figures are very promising, and show that staff are finding value in creating learning materials through ReView, and that students are finding value in watching them.
Recording made of a Key Note Session from the 2016 Teesside University Festival of Learning.
In order to maintain the growth in the usage figures of both creators and viewers, and also to help us identify and address potential barriers to ReView usage, LTE recently conducted a study which invited staff and students from Teesside University to share current practice regarding ReView. Their responses have provided the LTE team with some useful information around how the system is used, and the perceived benefits of the system for Learning and Teaching. This blog post will briefly highlight some of the main findings of this exercise, with some of the topics to be addressed further in future blog posts.
Current Practice
The following is a list of how ReView is being used by staff throughout the university.
• Lecture Capture: A recording of a traditional lecture, including lecture slides, presenter’s audio, and any multimedia resources shown.
• Flipped Classroom: The recorded lecture is made available online for students to watch before attending the lecture slot. The face to face time is then used to discuss the lecture topic, answer queries and for students to work interactively with their peer group and the lecturer.
• Create and share demonstrations of model questions and worked solutions to address multiple requests for support and/or tutorials.
• Recordings made to support curriculum specific activities such as SPSS, formulas and calculations and equipment demonstrations.
• Using ReView to capture short tutorials, demos and guest lectures
• Utilise within assessments as well as delivering content. For example, when recording student presentations, the student’s own clip can be incorporated into the feedback to demonstrate and illustrate their lecturer’s comments.
• Assist with moderation and external examination. For example, student presentations can be shared to assist with moderating (staff are not always available to sit and observe the presentations on the day) and to share with examiners
Example of a recording created at the 2016 Teesside University Festival of Learning Key Note Session, captured using ReView.
Innovative Practice
Staff identified the following points as examples of innovative practice, which increase the benefit and accessibility of the recordings created as well as increasing the adoption of the ReView system.
• Make all lectures available for students to utilise during revision and assessments.
• Bite size lecture capture: Demonstrating complex or frequently problematic aspects of a topic in small, say five to ten minute chunks, has been utilised to work through mathematical questions, demonstrate techniques and give instructions on using equipment. These capture events have been positively received by students and was identified as a useful event in feedback including from students who had not had this opportunity.
• Making short lecture capture events available in a timely and pertinent way, e.g. demonstrating a technique prior to the lecture/lab based session.
• Use event/lecture capture outside of teaching to normalise and integrate the use of this type of technology throughout the University, for example, use lecture capture to record and share School and University conferences
Concerns
Some staff also noted some anxiety about using the ReView system. The most common of these concerns had been identified previously and are common amongst nearly all institutions when rolling out a lecture capture system. The main concerns have been addressed in more depth in an earlier blog post: Addressing Four Common Lecture Capture Concerns Shared by Many Academics which is available here.
Student Perceptions of ReView
The main benefits which students identified during the review of the system are as follows.
• Provides a chance to experience the lecture again and clarify points
• Provides an aid to revision.
• Allows students to focus on the discussion during the lecture rather than taking notes
• Allows students to skip the parts they want rather than sitting through the whole presentation (when looking for revision and clarification)
• Allows access to lectures all year round
Interested in learning more about Lecture Capture and ReView? Click here to see upcoming ReView training events.