Lecture Capture Helps Medical Students Improve Grades

In response to a survey conducted in October, 93 percent of medical students at West Virginia University say they earn better grades with the aid of recorded lectures. 

In their first and second year of medical school, students' classes are all lecture-based. The School of Medicine doesn't require students to go to these classes. But since it started using lecture capture in all the classes, many of the students prefer to watch the lectures at home instead of going to class.   

Students miss lectures to learn better

Of the 100 students who responded to the survey, 36 said they missed three to 10 lectures per term. And 14 generally don't come to class, missing 10 or more lectures.

They don't come to class for a number of reasons. But one of the key reasons is the lecture recordings.

"The main thing is that they really prefer the presentation controls of being able to pause and rewind and stop so that if the instructor is saying something complicated, they have time to write it down, process it and think about it before they move on to the next thing," said Eric Coffman, manager of application development in the university's Robert C. Byrd Health Sciences Center.

In comments, some students said they listened to the lectures in class and then took notes while watching the lecture at home. Others skipped lectures in class because they took better notes while watching the recording, preferred the presentation controls or had fewer distractions at home.

All but one of the students recommended that other professors record their lectures. They cited a number of reasons, including the following:

• "People learn in different ways."
• "Sometimes students learn better on their own pace."
• "You can turn back time."
• "It is the best review of materials you can possibly have."
• "Repetition is necessary for learning, it is as simple as that."
• "My grades and sanity have both improved."

University finds affordable enterprise lecture capture tool

About 10 years ago, the health sciences center started using lecture capture technology, including Windows Media Services and Impatica for PowerPoint. It started with a few courses.

Later on, eight courses recorded lectures with Camtasia Studio. But it took a large amount of IT time and resources to record and process the lectures.

As student demand increased, Coffman looked around for an enterprise solution that would cut down on IT time needed for lecture capture. Camtasia Relay was in late stages of beta, so he begged to be let in.

Many of the other enterprise lecture capture systems he researched charged by either hardware per room, licensing per room or licensing per full time equivalent student. So three classes might have amazing technology, but the rest of the university wouldn't have any because the solutions were so expensive.

When Coffman tried one of these systems, all the content resided on a company's custom servers. So after the trial finished, the content vanished because it was locked into the server model. 

With Camtasia Relay, you're buying a license for the server that processes the recordings. The server doesn't host or store anything. Instead, it turns the lecture into friendly formats that can be used anywhere, like mp3, mp4 or RealPlayer.

Ultimately, the center offered lecture capture in almost every course because Relay was inexpensive to implement institution wide. It only takes up a quarter of one staff member's time to manage the recordings.

A single server can convert about 300 hours of recordings a day. It processes seven recordings at a time. And now, the university's recording about 30 hours a day.

The center started with instructors who were interested in the technology.

"Once they implemented it in their class, the student demand was so great that the other professors actually approached us and said, 'How can I get this in my class too?'"

Medical school takes several steps to prevent problems

But because it's technology — and a complicated one at that — lecture capture does present challenges. A hundred things could go wrong. The instructor may forget to turn on the mic. The computer may crash during recording. Lectures may be lost. 

Maybe one in 200 or 300 lectures has a problem. But once you start going a few semesters without losing one, students and instructors get pretty upset when one finally does get lost.

The university's taken a few steps to prevent these problems from happening. Every morning, Coffman's team replaces the microphone batteries in all 48 classrooms. 

Coffman said paying $3 a battery over the chance of losing a recording is probably worth it.

The center also wired the wireless microphones into the audio in classrooms. If students don't hear their professors' voices over the speakers in the room, they know the lecture's not recording, and they can say something.

The tech team makes sure everyone understands the correct steps to record lectures. But because the medical school has guest speakers who work in the field, these speakers may not be familiar with the technology. And that's the center's biggest challenge.

Student demand drives lecture capture adoption

In the School of Medicine, every class uses lecture capture. The other schools in the center use it to varying degrees. And it's all been driven by student demand.

"I just think they're happy with what they're getting here, and my feeling for the last couple years is that lecture capture in general is going to be something that the next generation of students is going to shop for," Coffman said. "Rather than just it being a perk at a university, they're going to be looking for this sort of thing. If you don't offer it, it will just be a disadvantage."