Recently, McGraw-Hill Higher Education issued a white paper, “The Tipping Point in Development Education” stating that adaptive learning technology in higher education can bridge remedial education gaps.
The report noted that technology-enabled developmental education programs that are designed specifically for underprepared students entering or returning to college can improve educational and other outcomes. These benefits can include increased retention and completion rates, a more accelerated and efficient process for students bound for college, and greater affordability.
With those goals in mind, here are some strategies utilized by several community colleges for better lecture capture, especially for remedial students:
- Understand how students will be using the lecture capture video: Some may need to watch to make up missed classes, while others might only need review materials.
- Train teachers by using lecture capture: This will help them get a feel for how lecture capture works by putting them in the role of student.
- Make lecture capture easy for instructors to use: Teachers have different levels of technical proficiency and interest in video creation. Some community colleges make the process simple by automating the lecture process—cameras switch on at a certain time, and in-ceiling microphones capture the audio.
- Investigate grants and other sources to fund more technology purchasing: This free white paper from Tegrity, written by the Center for Digital Education, looks at various ways that institutions are funding their lecture capture technologies.
- Use lecture capture as part of a larger technology strategy: Some community colleges have found success with combining short lecture videos with screen sharing technology, instant messaging applications, blogs, and other online resources.
- Emphasize in-person classroom time as vital to learning: Unless a course is online-only, it’s important to make sure students understand that lecture capture doesn’t replace classroom time completely. It can be utilized to review materials and get a student caught up if he or she misses class, but several community college professors believe that it doesn’t make up for face-to-face time.
- Hire more assistants for remedial courses to deal with the online review components: those in developmental classes often require more support, so having an “online assistant” can be useful for professors. These assistants could be in charge of gathering feedback from lecture videos, sharing links, providing instant messaging for student questions, and doing video editing.