Tech Corner: Capturing the Classroom

Tech Corner: Capturing the Classroom

BY ANDREA POUND
Special to the Rice News

Rice classes are more accessible than ever, thanks to high-tech capture classrooms that allow lectures to be captured on video and viewed live via the Internet.

The establishment of these capture classrooms has been a five-year endeavor managed jointly by the Division of Information Technology (IT) and the Center for Technology in Teaching and Learning. Funding for the project came in part from the Texas Telecommunications Infrastructure Board, which facilitates the deployment of technologies in schools, hospitals and libraries.

“Before the capture classrooms came into existence, there was no way to create a high-quality production of a lecture or event without bringing in a production crew,” said Carlos Solis, IT instructional technology manager.
The goal of the project was to make it possible to document lectures with minimal disruption to the class, while keeping the required personnel low and the production quality high.

The capture classrooms — 1064 Duncan Hall, 102 Howard Keck Hall and 116 and 318 Jesse H. Jones Graduate School Building — have two to four cameras and a microphone setup. The equipment is operated by an audiovisual specialist from one of two control rooms, located in the Mudd Building and Anne and Charles Duncan Hall. During each class, the specialist remotely manages the classroom cameras and the digitizing equipment needed to create live streaming video.

The cameras track the speaker as he or she moves and respond to the activation of microphones located on desks in the classroom to capture questions from the audience. A document camera makes it possible to switch to visual aids, such as PowerPoint slides. Other than signing a release form, very little is required of the participants being videotaped.

Gale Wiley, lecturer of management communications in the Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Management, has found that having live webcasts of classes, as well as a video archive of lectures, is invaluable for his students, many of whom are often involved in job searches as they finish up their MBA degrees. “A student can be on a job interview in New York City and not miss class,” Wiley said.

The archives are also useful for students who want an extra review. “It’s a powerful resource,” he said. “Students today are multitaskers, and this form of delivery serves their interests. My goal is to use the medium that is of interest to them.”

Capturing class sessions is especially important for Wiley’s course, which features a diverse group of guest speakers. Thanks to his growing video archive from past semesters, if a speaker has to cancel, Wiley has alternative presentations available to show in class. It can also be useful for students to compare presentations from past years to get a sense of how trends are changing.

“A former student who got a job in the field of investor relations even contacted me because she wanted to review a presentation she’d seen in class,” Wiley said. “It was important for her career.”

Susan Cates, lecturer of biochemistry and cell biology, teaches a class for which there is no textbook. After videotaping a semester’s worth of guest speakers, Cates has an arsenal of supplemental material that she can assign students to enhance the material presented by the current semester’s visiting experts.

Janet Siefert, faculty fellow in statistics, and Pat Reiff, professor of physics and astronomy, used streaming video in their astrobiology course to reach an audience that extended beyond Rice. Reiff said they wanted to use a capture classroom because people outside Rice wanted to participate and have a video archive of the course.

The course was offered for high school teachers as well as Rice students, and several class members participated remotely. They could watch the streaming video of the course live, e-mail their questions to the professors and get responses before the class was over.

The professors who have used the capture classrooms agreed the high-tech setup was easy to use, and they plan to continue using them in future semesters.

— Andrea Pound is a support specialist in academic and research computing.