CUSTOMER SPOTLIGHT:

Central Wyoming College Captures Lectures, Connects With Students

Central Wyoming College’s nursing program serves students across 15,000 square miles of sparsely populated rural areas and mountains. Long commutes, unpredictable weather and the demands of full-time jobs and families sometimes contribute to students missing class, so lecture capture technology was implemented to make class content available outside the classroom.

The nursing program identified several key needs: immediate and easy access to course material, 24/7 availability, and simple, reliable technology. The biggest requirement was that the teaching flow not be interrupted. The program leaders chose Echo³⁶⁰’s lecture capture platform.

The EchoSystem immediately revolutionized the way teachers had been recording and distributing course content to their students. Now, the instructor logs into the software and simply teaches. The EchoSystem automatically schedules the class, digitally records the teacher, captures visual aids from slides and whiteboards, and packages it together for student download directly to a computer or portable MP3 player. Students play back the lecture at their convenience on their iPods and home computers, choosing audio-only or audio with graphics formats, fast-forwarding and rewinding as they go.

The Echo360 solution has had a huge impact on CWC’s nursing program. It’s faster, easier, and more cost-effective than previous methods, and data shows a significant improvement in student performance:

• Students increased performance on final exams by 6.5% compared to scores of students from the years before Echo³⁶⁰ podcasting was introduced.
  
• Students improved comprehension by listening to material during long commutes and throughout their day. In fact, 50% review podcasts for every lecture, and 70% listen to the entire lecture when they access a podcast.
• More than 90% of students feel that podcasts are beneficial to their learning experiences.

To learn more about how Central Wyoming College incorporated the EchoSystem into their nursing program, click here to download the webinar archive.

Does Attendance Equal Achievement?

By Jocasta Williams, Adjunct Research Fellow, The University of Western Australia

Student attendance, or more accurately student lack of attendance, at university lectures is a fervently debated topic. From as early as the 14th century, lecturers have observed and often despaired over declining student numbers (Rodgers, 2001). Research into this phenomenon gained momentum in the 1970s with numerous studies being conducted into what motivates students to attend or to miss lectures, predominantly in an attempt to understand and counteract the trend (Snyder, 1971; Bligh, 1972; Feldman, 1976). More recent studies have furthered this research taking into account numerous cultural changes that are impacting the student body, including economic and societal factors, as well as various advances in technology (Laurillard, 1993; McInnis, 2001; Biggs, 2003). Increasingly research into this area is focusing on the relationship between attendance and academic performance with differing results. Some studies argue that attendance has a positive affect on academic performance (Massingham and Herrington, 2006); others suggest that the relationship between attendance and achievement is equivocal (St. Clair, 1999).

Through the provision of recorded lectures, lecture materials are being made more accessible and students have more flexibility in the way in which they can learn from lectures. One of the few criticisms that has been directed at this practice relates to its supposed potential negative impact on attendance. For example, in Massingham and Herrington’s research into student attitudes, participation and performance in relation to class attendance, one of the main reasons noted by students for not attending lectures was the availability of them online (Massingham and Herrington, 2006). These findings are corroborated by Bell and Lane in their separate studies (Bell et al., 2001; Lane, 2006).

Conversely, there are a similar number of research studies that claim recording lectures has no negative impact on attendance at all. In the extensive research undertaken by Brotherton and Abowd, for example, they found that recording lectures “does not negatively affect attendance .. other attendance factors—such as the time of day of the class, the lecture topic, or the engagement level of the professor—might dominate.” (Brotherton and Abowd, 2004). McElroy and Blount’s research supports these findings (McElroy and Blount, 2006). A few studies have even reported that the attendance at lectures has increased following the introduction of lecture recording.

With the practice of recording lectures becoming increasingly prevalent in higher education, and the debate regarding its impact on attendance constantly hovering on the sidelines, there are a range of issues that each institution and lecturer need to consider for themselves. For example, although the availability of lecture recordings supports student need for flexibility in learning, it is also important that students should be advised of the differences inherent in live and recorded lectures, and be provided some guidelines about the appropriate use of lecture recordings, so that they can make informed decisions when approaching this resource. Additionally, with increasing numbers of students finding themselves dependent on lecture recordings to juggle their work and personal commitments with their studies, the focus may have to shift from concerns with attendance to the levels of engagement students are having with the lecture material. Research has shown that the majority of students use lecture recordings predominantly to revise and review concepts, as a support to their attendance at classes. For these students, as well as the ones who are unable to attend lectures due to other commitments, recording lectures is a vital practice to support and enhance learning in higher education – and it should be acknowledged that the crucial thing is that students are learning what they need to learn from lectures.

MEET THE TEAM:

Ted Smoot

Full name: Ted Smoot
Title: Quality Assurance Engineer
Year(s) at Echo³⁶⁰: 1 year
Birth date: January 11, 1976

Relevant Experience:

I was a System Administrator at StrongholdTech (now Dealer Advance) with a similar Linux architecture as the EchoSystem. I also do work as a freelance IT and AV technician. One of my favorite projects was working on running 48 channels of audio wiring into a studio of a private home.

What do you like to do in your spare time?

I’m part of the Metrofilm Club – a small group working on producing four short films which will be totally self-produced with little or no budget. My primary roles in the club are to produce and direct.

If computers were never invented, what would you be doing now?

I would be recording music using analogue tape, and reels of film to produce movies.

What was your childhood career aspiration?

To design and build big machines.

If you could go back in time and use Echo360 in only one class, what class would it be? Why?

I would use it in DECA (Student Marketing Association) class as a reference tool – the information in that course was quite relevant and useful, given my current position.

Favorite part of your job?

I really enjoy solving complex problems in unique deployment scenarios. I like how all the pieces come together in a deployment.

Favorite smell?

Without a doubt, Starbucks coffee!

Favorite food?

A really good steak.