Lecture recording: Long-established and valued by many

Although they were once regarded critically, lecture recordings today form a natural part of academic teaching. The easy and quick production of learning content, great flexibility and a high level of acceptance among students have led to this breakthrough. Significant advances in technology and easy access to portals such as SLIDESTAR have also accelerated these developments.  

Several years ago, lecture recordings were still the subject of intense debate. Some proclaimed they represented the end of didactics; it was officially felt that Humboldt’s ghost was being driven from the auditorium by Media Player; and professors who dedicated themselves to this new topic were confronted by the opinion that “Universities much be protected from these people!” Times have changed, and little of this negative feeling remains. In contrast, lecture recordings are currently recognised and accepted as a valid form of academic teaching. There is much to be said in their favour: content can be produced easily and quickly, new forms of learning are created, the organisation of study becomes more flexible and, last but not least, students appreciate lecture recordings as this makes their life – and learning – easier.

This has been confirmed by student surveys at various universities: 70% of students questioned at the University of Stuttgart within the scope of a project stated that they had used lecture recordings and 84% would like to benefit from them in future. The results of a study at the University of Freiburg were very similar: 85% of students considered the prepared materials to be sensible and helpful. 63% of students use the content more than 1–2 times a week, or even more frequently. The duration of use is over 3–4 hours per week for most students. And what do students use the recordings for? They mainly refer to them when working on exercises and when they have difficulty understanding something, but they also consider the recordings to be an alternative to attending the actual lectures in the auditorium – particularly in the case of large lectures with several hundred participants.

Lecture recordings are therefore very popular among students. Students value the higher service quality of educational organisations which is achieved as a result – and this is exactly what student fees should be used for.
The positive development of lecture recordings is also associated with significant advances in technology over the past few years. Software applications have become simpler, while also offering far more functionality, which is of importance to tutors, i.e. the “producers”. Due to the development of podcasts – in particular, video podcasts – mobile learning on hand-held multimedia terminals has become much easier, while access to lecture recordings has been improved, as internet services and portals are now available with a high level of content.

IMC offers a comprehensive solution for lecture recordings with LECTURNITY and SLIDESTAR. LECTURNITY records lectures at the same time as the presentation, with all information sources collected together in one recorded document. Not only are the slides captured, but also written annotations on the slides, the spoken word and images from the lecture theatre. And with the help of SLIDESTAR, an e-lecture portal can be created using the Web 2.0 community, enabling the publication of live recordings directly after the lecture. And there’s another special feature: during upload, an automatic full-text index is created within SLIDESTAR, so that information can be searched in a targeted way within lecture documents.