Thoughts on “The Convergence of Lecture Capture and Social Media”

Joshua Kim from Dartmouth spoke on January 26 on the topic of “The Convergence of Lecture Capture and Social Media”. You can view the archive of the seminar (elluminate) here:
http://net.educause.edu/live102

I found myself a bit confused at the multitude of what seem to be cumbersome and expensive tools for this purpose. Can’t any student with a cellphone capture a lecture and share it via free tools? (permission and copyright aside — that’s a different issue and it’s one that is addressed in the presentation — in fact that’s a very complex area and developing strategies for keeping policies up-to-speed with advances in technology is a daunting task).
And the overall concept, well, I guess it’s just that I’m not a fan of education as a “knowledge transmission” system (it doesn’t seem necessary in this information-rich era) so when there are face-to-face ‘classes’, I believe they should focus on doing things, exploring ideas, raising questions, etc. And yes, those kinds of sessions could be captured and shared by the Lecture Capture tools, but then maybe the tools need to be called something else. Somewhere as I browsed websites related to this issue (one of the vendors’ sites I believe) I came across the idea that these tools are great because in live lectures, students can only take notes at one-fifth of the words-per-minute rate that the professor is speaking. That thought REALLY made me cringe. I can’t imagine ever needing 100% of all the words that come out of a professor’s mouth in a typical lecture.

It’s not that I don’t love a great presentation (I adore the TED talks for example) — TED’s version of idea-sharing (or iTunes U, YouTube and more) makes total sense to me — as something to view outside of class and then discuss, with guidance, as part of an educational experience.

And the “lectury” content – well I’d like it to be available according to my currently favourite buzz-phrase “just in time, just enough and just for me” rather than the old “just in case”.

Some thoughts from participants during Joshua’s elluminate session:

“Lectures are not courses. Courses are not degrees.” (this is an idea that fits with my thought that eventually credentialling will be the real function of higher-ed institutions)

And there were many comments about the need for Skills for searching. And the exciting thought that searching within video content will be a reality soon.

Anyway, this session got me on a tangent that led to some links worth hanging on to 🙂

http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ELI7044.pdf (Educause 7 things you should know about lecture capture)

http://www.educause.edu/Resources/CapturingLecturesNoBrainerorSt/192206

http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/technology_and_learning/the_convergence_of_lecture_capture_and_social_media

http://educatech.wordpress.com/ teaching as a dynamic activity (blog by Jerridkruse)