Mike stated that he feels everyone should give Q-Review a try. Apart from its ease of use, Mike explained that he feels Q-Review gives students extra support, and allows him to give a better quality lecture to his students.

This five minute video clip highlights some of the added benefits that Mike found while using the technology and includes Mike’s experience on students use of the recordings and its impact on their attendance.

If you are interested in using Q-Review Personal Capture to record your lectures please submit a request by logging into our online helpdesk at https://helpdesk.its.qmul.ac.uk – click on the ‘Request’ button and then select ‘Q-Review – Lecture Capture’.

More video clips from the interview with Mike Noon coming soon:

Part 1 – Mike explains why everyone should give Q-Review a try
Part 2 – Using Q-Review to record lectures, make edits and distribute to students

Students are embracing this progression of learning and especially like the fact that they can rewind and replay the lecture at their own pace. One student commented that a revision lecture capture was “the most useful and informative revision materials that [he] had ever recieved [sic]“. Many students remarked that they wish more teachers would use this facility.

While some lecturers record a live lecture or event, others use the technology to record their lesson(s) without an audience. This seems to be a good starting point for lecturers, and gets them used to the idea of being recorded and more familiar with the process.

Dr. Eram Rizvi, from the Physics department, did just that when he came to our E-Learning Studio and recorded a revision lesson for his students, using material that he had covered in a previous live class. He wanted to record the already taught lesson so that his students could review the content at their own pace.

We asked Dr. Rizvi to share his experience with us, and below is an excerpt of Dr. Rizvi’s interview, followed by some noteworthy feedback from his students.

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ELU: Have you previously recorded a lecture?
Dr. Rizvi: No, this was the first time I had tried to record a lecture

ELU: How did you find out about Q-Review?
Dr. Rizvi: After speaking with Eoin some time ago he mentioned the existence of this ESD facility

ELU: How did you prepare to use the system? Did you need training?
Dr. Rizvi: Very little training was needed. I had prepared the lectures in any case, and just needed about 1hr of time to learn how to operate the [Q-Review] system

ELU: What did you record?
Dr. Rizvi: I recorded two revision lectures given using prepared powerpoint slides

ELU: How long did you spend recording?
Dr. Rizvi: The total lecture time was about 2 hrs, I needed an extra hour initially to learn the system from you, and I needed another 30mins in total to do the final edit for the first lecture, but the edit for the second lecture then took only 2 mins.

(Dr. Rizvi wanted more control over his recording and needed the time to learn about the system. For live recordings, staff just need to let the E-Learning Q-Review team know and they will schedule the system to automatically record.)

ELU: What did you think of the Q-Review system? Was it easy to use?
Dr. Rizvi: For recording the system is very easy to use. For editing the software can be improved. One difficulty I had was in using the time-slider to find a specific moment in the video to edit out. It would be better if I could use the slider in 1s intervals, or insert an exact time into a text-box.

ELU: How did you make your recordings available to your students?
Dr. Rizvi: I made available the audio only and video podcasts as downloads plus links to the Q-Review page for the enhanced video with slides. The powerpoint slides were also provided as a separate PDF file. You can see the info here:
http://www.ph.qmul.ac.uk/~phy302/ExamHelp.htm

ELU: What did your students think of it? Have they been able to access it?
Dr. Rizvi: Most students used it and all thought it was a very good idea and would recommend its wider usage. The real benefit was in being able to replay sections of the podcast and to go at their own pace. Two students mentioned that the podcasts are good for reviewing concepts, but not good for going through detailed mathematics where 1-2-1 teaching is more appropriate.

ELU: Would you use Q-Review again?
Dr. Rizvi: Definitely

ELU: Would you recommend Q-Review to others?
Dr. Rizvi: I already have done. I have asked this be raised at the next Teaching Committee meeting in the physics dept on 23rd June.

ELU: How might you use Q-Review in the future? (E.g. would you record a live lecture?)
Dr. Rizvi: Yes, I would use it to record a live lecture to provide additional revision material before the exam period. I would not make the videos immediately available for fear of students not attending.

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Student Feedback

Dr. Rizvi shared some feedback from his students regarding the usage of podcasts for revision lectures. He initially asked students if they wanted to have podcasts. He got 16 responses, of which 13 wanted the podcast as opposed to an actual revision lecture.

One student who had not wanted the podcasts in the first place later remarked:

” felt that the podcasts were better than I had expected them to be……mathematical stuff, I think is better explained face to face……Personally, I would still perfer to have normal revison sessions because when I dont understand something I like to ask then and there.”

Other students left the following comments:

“Overall I was very impressed and would enjoy the prospect of lecturer’s making this a standard in study material. A big thanks to you for the time spent creating these videos for us.”

“I have finished watching the video revision lectures and found them far more useful then the revision lectures. Although the revision lectures provide us a chance to ask the lecturer any problems we have, I believe that’s better off done on a one to one basis with the lecturer.”

“I thought they were some of the most useful and informative revision materials that I have ever recieved, I found the ability to listen to the lectures and take notes at my own pace enabled me to get alot more from the podcasts given than I would have done in a normal lecture with the same material . I would appreciate it if all lecturers followed suit!”

“I personally found the podcasts to be massively useful, mostly because they provided a very good means of refreshing my core knowledge of NPA [Nuclear, Physics and Astrophysics] without sifting through vast sets of notes”

” I sometimes forget things or am not able to catch everything you say if Im copying down notes at the same time. It is also much more convenient as sometimes planned revision lectures can cut into peoples personalized revision schedules, if they are revising different subjects. I do hope you continue these in future courses and maybe suggest the idea to other lecturers as I thought it would have been much more helpful in other subjects as well”

“The material was well presented with the slides along the bottom so you could quickly get a sense of the over all content that was being covered. I prefered having the video of the lecture since although this didn’t fulfill any particular function it was easier to concentrate on watching someone give a lecture than just listening to the audio.”

“I would definitely recomend other members of staff trying out something similar in future.”

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If you would like to schedule a Q-Review recording, or get more information on lecture capture, please contact us at qreview-admin@qmul.ac.uk or visit this webpage for more information.

The microphones in the lecture theatre have to be used. They’re often viewed as technology that blends into the background and as such are easily missed. But every mic, including the ‘gooseneck’ microphone attached to the podium has an ‘on’ switch and, of course, an ‘off’ swtich that the presenter before you might have switched.

These microphones are primarily used to aid in voice-projection; they are linked to the speakers in the lecture theatre. But they double-up as recording inputs for Q-Review.

There are easy ways of testing to make sure the microphone that you’re using is turned on:

• When it’s switched on, a light will come in and…
• you can tap the microphone very lightly and you should hear the impact loud-and-clear from the room speakers

I’ve included some (very blurry) photos taken in the Fogg Lecture Theatre in the School of Biological and Chemical Sciences.

Here you can see the ‘gooseneck’ podium microphone. In a bit closer and you can see the ‘on’ switch and the light that’s come on.

Here you can see the other two microphones you can choose to use (note that you could use all three if you chose):

1. A handheld mic that you could carry about or perhaps hand out to the audience for questions
2. An infra-red microphone that you could clip to a shirt pocket or wear around your neck

The handheld mic has an on/off button.

The infrared mic has an on/off button and a volume control.

QMUL’s lecture capture pilot project, called Q-Review, is approaching the halfway point in its pilot year. While we’ve had our share of hiccups and setbacks, the project is progressing well. We’ve learned a lot about best practice for the system and are looking forward to disseminating this when the project enters its production phase.

So… what have we been up to?

The Code of Practice for Q-Review has been ratified by the Learning, Teaching and Assessment Committee. This provides a policy for how the Echo360 system is run at QMUL. The document can be found here.

There are now three hardware installations in centrally bookable lecture theatres: Perrin in Whitechapel (which is in collaboration with colleagues in the School of Medicine and Dentistry), Fogg in the School of Biological and Chemical Sciences and Skeel in the People’s Palace. All three systems are now operational. We have been collaborating with AV and Room Bookings on these installations and it’s been a great opportunity to work across central service departments.

We’re doing research into good practice with lecture capture. We have been working with the School of Biological and Chemical Sciences on a new method of module-delivery. We pre-recorded traditional didactic lectures, released them in advance, and ran online discussion forums based on the online lectures. This freed up valuable face-to-face time for interactive question-and-answer sessions. We are currently running surveys and focus groups and will have it written up for the end of the academic year. So far feedback has been very positive from both staff and students. Students have said that “it is extremely useful and allows me to understand the material better. That it can be played again and again helps me in remembering complicated exercises by repeating it as much as I need” and “the teaching method provided online was fantastic!! if only other lecturers would do it too!”

I’d like to record a session – what do I need to do?

You can use the system to record one lecture or a whole module. If you would like to use this system there is one thing to do and one very important thing to remember. Get in touch with us at qreview-admin@qmul.ac.uk and always turn on the microphone in the room you’re recording in!

The Distance and E-Learning Unit are running a short session on the Q-Review system on Tuesday 8th December. This will provide more information about what the system is, how it works and how you can make use of it. For more information and to book a place on the session, please see our course booking system on http://www.esdcourses.org.uk/. If you can’t make it this time but you’re still interested, there are other future sessions planned, again see our online course booking system for more details.

Session details

Date: Tuesday 8th December

Time: 11 – 12

Location: E-learning Studio, Third Floor, Francis Brancroft Building, Mile End Campus

So now for the perhaps convoluted e-learning take on this post to make it more relevant to where it’s being posted…attending a Peter Landin lecture sounds like a real experience. Enough of an experience that someone, over 20 years later, can remember it in quite a lot of detail. Peter’s lectures, however, sound like they were quite…well…traditional…in their format. The effectiveness of the traditional lecture in higher education has become a topic of debate (Diana Laurillard’s "Rethinking University Teaching" for example) and the recording of lectures has become an area of great interest recently. Indeed we’re piloting our own lecture capture system in parts of QM (now Queen Mary, University of London by the way). With this in my mind, I was talking to my husband about what it would have been like if Peter’s lectures could have been recorded. This raised some interesting issues. Clearly he thought it would be wonderful to be able to revisit the lectures now…perhaps an element of nostalgia? Given Peter’s standing in the Computer Science community, they would also be interesting as historical documents. From my perspective, as someone who was not taught by Peter Landin and who struggled with some of the areas of Computer Science that he taught, I wonder if having access to a recording of his lectures would have helped me even without having been there. His elegance of description might have been just what I needed.

However, would Peter’s lectures have been different had he known they were being recorded? Would he ever have allowed himself to be recorded? Would students have turned up to the lectures had they known that the recordings would be available? The last question is one that is raised a lot in the context of lecture recording. My husband says that Peter’s lectures were just full of energy and therefore very engaging, if not tremendously interactive. This is something that it’s hard to imagine that you can experience through a Flash movie…you really had to be there for the full effect. There is some evidence that students do understand this and therefore lecture recording may not necessarily have a detrimental effect on attendance. (see for instance the Executive Summary on an Australian project called "The Impact of Web-Based Lecture Technologies on Current and Future Practices in Learning and Teaching").

To finish…I’m sure there’s lots of people who have anecdotes about Peter and I have one, albeit second hand. At the time, Peter did not have a computer in his office and was being encouraged to learn a bit about the UNIX operating system. Someone in one of the open plan departmental labs was trying to teach him some UNIX commands and after a while his voice rang out across the lab declaring that "the semantics were a bit ropey"

Well quite.

Photo credit

recurrence on Flickr

Q-Review is a ‘lecture capture’ service we are trialling in Educational and Staff Development. This is an initiative which has being brought into pilot stage. It is a service for staff and students that is being developed in response to staff and student demand.

`Lecture capture´ refers to the recording of an educational event using a combination of digital media. Lecture capture has being taken up successfully by the OU, Imperial, Birkbeck, Heriot Watt, Coventry, Newcastle, LSE and many other UK institutions.

Here at QMUL we are using a system called Echo360. Educational and Staff Development have been using the technology for the past few years. More recently we have received an increasing number of requests from academics to broaden the availability of the system. We have responded to that need by making a portable installation available for short term loans. As part of the Teaching Room Refurbishment project, new systems will go into two lecture theatres this summer.

You can find answers about the system here: http://www.esddelu.org.uk/technologies/qreview/

I think Screencast comes into its own when combined with Jing. Being able to rapidly and easily record a video of what’s happening on your screen and upload it with one button to your Screencast account is very very useful. From there you just need to distribute the video which you can do by emailing the URL to whomever, linking to it from a website or embedding the HTML, which is generated by Screencast, into a webpage or VLE course area.

However, Screencast is not just limited to Jing. You can upload other media files into it which presents, at least a temporary and low-level but immediate, solution to the problem of storage. Where to put files is the big problem that our staff encounter with online video. We usually suggest YouTube but some staff have issues with the public availability; which is reasonable. Screencast movies are, by the very nature of their being available to share, technically public but do not have the massive search engine of Google indexing their location.

Screencast also provides a few other functions:

• Customized Templates
• Desktop Uploader
• RSS Feeds so your users can subscribe to your media
• MediaRoll widget for blogs

So what does it do? It’s a free application that works as an excellent screen recorder; either video or a still image. It sits in a very tidy manner at the very top of your screen like so:

When you click on the unobtrusive circle you given the option to Capture or look at your History. The History option will bring up your Library; Jing will record every capture you’ve made and its current location. The second point there, location, is important… and we’ll get back to that in a bit.

The capture software gives you the option of a still image or video. The video is a fairly basic recorder but often-times that’s all you need. It will produce something like what you can link to below (note that all the images and videos in this post are recorded using Jing and hosted by Screencast… WordPress unfortunately will not accept embedded video from Jing so just click to follow the link instead). What I’ve recorded is a brief run-through of the annotation tools available for a still image. In this example, let’s say I’m giving an introduction to the tools in Photoshop. Audio can be included but I’ve decided not to.

Click here to see an example of Jing video on the screencast website

Lastly, I mentioned how important the location was to note. This is, in my opinion, where Jing excels. The biggest issue we find people have with online video is not how to record but where it goes. Jing will allow you to save any capture locally (the swf video comes with a player built into the file) but it will also upload any files to Techsmiths free hosting service called Screencast. You can also use it to FTP to any site or to upload to Flickr or YouTube. All very very useful. The free hosting service has a limit of 2GB of space and 2GB bandwith p/m usage but that’s more than enough for you to start making a library of short rough-and-ready content for your learners.

Lastly it also publishes a paragraph of HTML so you easily embed content into another location, for example your VLE course area.