Beyond lecture capture: what teaching staff want from web-based lecture technologies

For the past decade, the primary use of recordings in higher education has been to make live lectures available to students for review (lecture capture). However, with the rise of podcasting and the increased focus on interaction as a means to engage students, current web-based lecture technologies (WBLT) are capable of much more than simply recording and distributing a live lecture. This study aimed to discover what teaching staff are currently doing, and what they would like to be doing with WBLT for learning and teaching. Data were drawn from initial focus groups conducted with 10 academic teaching staff at Swinburne University of Technology, as well as an online survey that was distributed to all Swinburne staff with a lecture capture account. Three key requirements for a university-wide WBLT system were identified: flexibility in where and when recordings can be made, flexibility in control over those recordings, and the desire to be able to interact with the recordings and incorporate them as an integral part of the course. These findings indicate that teaching staff want to innovate in their use of recordings and need to be supported to do so through the adoption of an appropriate recording solution.