Lecture Recordings - Departmental Policy Statement

Psychology has been the pioneer department at the University leading the way in the provision of lecture captured material as a valuable learning resource. We started recording lectures in 2009 as part of the pilot project (after an in-house podcasting trial) and we adopted an opt-out policy (default is to record teaching sessions) as soon as the technology became widely available setting our current position of always attempting to record all suitable sessions. We believe these are an excellent supplementary resource that can help clarify understanding, enhance learning and provide a useful revision tool.

Students (and staff) are advised to consult the Replay Web Pages that contain useful information about the system and how to use Replay

Benefits

The University Policy (linked below) outlines some benefits of Lecture Capture

Recordings of lectures are valuable to students. The utility of recordings to personal study strategies has been widely referenced in research literature and by internal studies and surveys of students conducted here at York. This evidence shows that:

- The availability of recordings enables students to reflect on and revisit the content of a teaching encounter, empowering them to address knowledge gaps without having to pursue clarifications from staff. This leads to better engagement with ‘live’ in-class sessions.
- The expectation that a recording will be made after an encounter reduces anxiety in circumstances where students have not taken sufficiently detailed notes in class. It further enables students to develop more detailed notes on the content in personal study time after the encounter has taken place.
- The availability of recordings may reduce cognitive load when students engage with new content presented in a live encounter.

- The user interface used at York (the Replay service) provides students with a ‘locus of control’: supporting unlimited reiteration and the ability to pause, stop, skim-watch content and control playback speed

This is an excellent evidence-based guide (pdf) to effective use of recordings, well worth a read.

Suitable Sessions

We have always strived to record all lectures on our undergraduate and masters programmes. Lectures are usually suitable for recording due to the nature of delivery. We also record some of our practicals, typically Research Methods 1 and strand practicals in which a large element of instruction is mixed with the practical element. We aim to record our Advanced Module seminars and ad-hoc teaching and revision sessions where appropriate.

The weekly Research Seminars (with internal and external speakers) are also recorded and made available to all members of the department.

We do not typically record tutorials, seminars or workshops or sessions where the students are participating in the discussion (eg tutorial) or it's predominantly taught from a self-paced workbook or digital equivalent (for example Research Methods 2, Programming in Neuroimaging). Primarily this is because we do not want to inhibit participation, or the technology can not capture the content in a useful supplementary manner.

Some sessions, be they lectures seminars, workshops or practicals contain sensitive information and restricted materials. We do not record these as it is inappropriate and can compromise the integrity of the session. We will notify students well in advance if a session is to be omitted.

The University timetable shows your teaching sessions and which ones are marked for recording with the replay symbol (see below). If it doesn't have the symbol (>) it won't be recorded, check your timetable before the session.

Publishing and Availability

The current system, Panopto, is usually very quick to publish if recordings are automatically released without edits. Recordings will often appear on the relevant VLE module Replay Content tab within a few hours. However, this is not guaranteed but recordings should appear within 3 working days. Our default is to automatically release but occasionally staff edit recordings to remove copyrighted materials or other unsuitable content, in this case, publication will be delayed but still should appear within 3 working days.

It is important to be aware that this is a supplementary service and is not guaranteed:

a small number of teaching rooms are not covered by recording equipment
some sessions are not suitable for recording, see above
it is a highly complex system integrating timetabling, desktop PCs, multiple microphones, remote servers, the VLE and humans, there are many ways for it to fail, but we typically see about 95% success rates.
other technical issues outside our control can sometimes prevent recording or lead to poor quality recordings
if a recording fails, we will endeavour to provide a historic recording if the content is still largely similar and relevant (subject to availability)

You should not become over-reliant on the availability of recordings. It is important to attend all timetabled teaching sessions, collect any printed handouts and to make good notes which can support your learning and help with later revision.

University Policy

In Sept. 2018 the University issued a policy on Lecture Capture for all teaching on taught awards. The policy is very similar to our existing practice and we have aligned ourselves to it specifically

Publication Policy: Recordings to be released immediately

Downloads: Enabled

Coverage: All teaching encounters labelled as a ‘lectures' in the timetabling system will be scheduled for recording,

At Desk Recordings.

Students are able to use the Panopto software to do screen captures, with web cam inputs to aid their studies and create content. For details see https://www.york.ac.uk/staff/teaching/support/recording-lectures/personal-capture/