Levy Library Blog

When it comes to education, there are a countless number of students who are determined to study hard, get an outstanding grade, and use the knowledge they have learned in order to apply it to real life scenarios. No matter how great you are at playing the role of a student, there are still times when you will have to tend to other aspects of your life. Perhaps you have to go to the doctor for a check-up, get together with family that you haven’t seen for a while, or finally buy that dream house you have always wanted.

Trying to juggle so many aspects of your life unfortunately means you will someday have to miss a critical lecture. Even if you attend all your classes, you still have the potential to have your mind wander during that three hour lecture, which for whatever reason starts at seven in the morning. You could stress out and desperately try to get notes from your classmates or make an appointment with your Course Director to review the material. Could there be another way of dealing with this situation?

To help relieve some of the anxiety of missing a class or just simply missing a crucial piece of information during a lecture, many schools started to look to lecture capture systems as a solution. A lecture capture system is designed to have a camera record the audio and video of the instructor, and the displayed content of the lecture. All of this is then uploaded to the Learning Management System (Blackboard), allowing the students to watch the lecture on demand.

The Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai has lecture capture (Echo360) system cameras installed in various rooms in the Annenberg and Hess buildings.

If you ever find yourself in the Levy Library, take a look around and observe some of the students. You might spot some of them watching a recorded lecture. The popularity and the demand for these recorded sessions are growing and the vision to utilize the system is expanding. For the past four months the Instructional Technology Group (ITG) has been working on upgrades that will substantially enhance the usability of the system. Some of the upgrades you will notice are:

• The branding at the top of the lecture capture player;
• A capture will now be available as fast as two hours after the lecture has concluded;
• A software version of the lecture capture system is now available for your laptop. As an instructor, this means you can create recorded lectures in your office on your laptop and distribute them as lecture captures through Blackboard;
• The ability to view lecture captures from a laptop or mobile device.

Medical Education and Graduate School lectures are not the only materials being recorded. Currently, we have over 60 courses and programs using the lecture capture system. There have been various events and programs that have benefited from having their sessions saved and displayed to the students and faculty. These include:

• Bench to Bedside
• EHHOP Grand Rounds
• The Fellowship Core Conference
• speaker panels and trainings
• the Summer Enrichment Program
• and the USMLE Program

During 2014, our lecture capture system has recorded and produced 596 videos between the months of January and May. In 2013, we obtained 456 videos during the same 5 month span. We can see that the numbers have increased and I predict the number of captures will continue to increase, further helping the students and course directors that use it. In this regard, we should grow along with lecture capture and utilize it as best we can.

“In a Fall 2010 another lecture capture company, Tegrity, Surveyed  6,883 college age and adult higher education students, a total of 85% stated that having access to recorded lectures made study somewhat or much more effective than normal.” Greenberg, A. D., & Nilssen, A. (2011). Lecture Capture Deployment Models

“Wainhouse Research has stated elsewhere that lecture capture is today – and will remain for the foreseeable future – one of the hottest campus technologies for higher education. We have identified certain trends through conversations with colleges and universities – many of whom are clients wrestling with how to scale – which involve the need to address mobility, data, customized learning, and scalability.” Greenberg, A. D., & Nilssen, A. (2011). Lecture Capture Deployment Models

Starting on June 29, 2014 the Levy Library will observe the following Summer Hours:

The Library will be closed on Friday, July 4, 2014 for Independence Day.

The Library’s online resources, guides and tutorials are available 24 hours/day, 7 days per week and are available both on and off-campus.  For more information on library hours and services please see: http://libguides.mssm.edu/libraryhours

Enjoy your Summer!