Video Capture of Lectures - The Undergraduate Medical School’s Experience

The MBChB programme is delivered through a number of different teaching methods, including clinical bedside teaching in both general practice environments and in central Glasgow teaching hospitals. In order to provide greater flexibility in attending clinical placements for phase 3 of the course, video capture of lectures was introduced. The aim was to allow students to attend clinical placements without the restrictions of having to travel to campus to attend lectures. Echo360 system was the platform recommended and installed by IT services in the main lecture theatres. The EchoSystem captures audio and video sources along with course visuals from document cameras and PCs. Capture is scheduled in advance and recording is automated – requiring no technological input from lecturers. The system transforms the captured audio, video and VGA sources into ready to play rich media and podcasts. Links to recordings are automatically published to a course portal and made available to the students on the VLE. Students can see, hear and experience the lecture as if they were in the class, viewing the lectures on demand anytime, anywhere on a computer or a mobile device with a web browser, stopping, pausing, or replaying any part of the lecture. Instructors can benefit from reviewing their lecture performance, save time by pointing students to online instruction rather than answering questions covered in class, and can review user statistics. As the majority of lecturers on the MBChB programme are NHS staff, copyright and performance rights’ consents were obtained before any recordings were made. To ensure students adhered to an agreement not to breach any copyright restrictions of the recorded material an agreement page was displayed before students were provided with access to the course portal. Response from students is positive and user statistics indicate significant student usage, a full review and student evaluation will be completed