Innovative lecture capture

In an era of MOOCs and flipped classrooms, lecture capture (though a popular choice with an increasing number of institutions) can often be a dull and passive experience for students who are required to watch lengthy films, often showing a static view of a lecturer speaking at a lectern, in their own time. There is no opportunity for interaction, and the length of the lecture is often detrimental to the student experience as the human brain cannot retain more than a small percentage of information relayed over such a long time span. Cardiff University’s School of Healthcare Sciences (HCARE) has developed a number of online lecture capture resources for students, but using an interactive approach. Footage is broken into a series of fifteen to twenty minute chunks, with interactive elements such as quizzes, drag and drop activities and text input areas (where students can record thoughts and feedback) placed between each ‘chunk’. Once students have worked through a film clip and its associated activities (thereby self-assessing what they have learnt) they can move on to the next clip, and so on. At the start of the activity students can download any presentation slides used in the lecture and at the end students are given links to relevant websites and to a lecture-based discussion forum where students can comment, ask and even answer peers’ questions. Fora such as this also assist in eradicating any sense of isolation an online student may feel, as it becomes the digital backbone of an asynchronous community