Reducing Barriers of Publishing Lectures on the Web

Abstract

Publishing lectures on the web, or lecture casting, can have several advantages [1] and student experiences from using lecture casts have been very positive [2]. For example students are not bound to a specific time and place and there are possibilities to watch whole or parts of lectures several times. However, the use of lecture casts is not very widespread, and there are a number of reasons why a teacher might be hesitant to lecture casting. In this roundtable we presents the results and experiences from using one specific method of lecture casting which address a number of these reasons. 1) teachers’ anxiety over appearing in a video, 2) cost and ease of producing and distributing the lecture and 3) difficulties to update lecture casts. The method is to use narration-mode in PowerPoint and to publish the result using BrainShark, one of several available web-based tools for publishing narrated PowerPoint lectures on the web. This method has several advantages. First, publishing only voice and slides is a lower mental barrier for the lecturer than to also include a video of the lecturer. Second the technical threshold is very low. The only equipment needed is the computer with the PowerPoint presentation and optionally an external microphone. The entire production and distribution is also handled by the lecturer alone, no technical personnel is needed which also greatly reduces the cost and administrative overhead of publishing lectures. Third, the lecture-casts are easy to update, since individual slides can be added, removed, or re-recorded without re-recording the entire lecture. Our tests show that the production time of recording and distributing a lecture cast is only marginally longer than giving the lecture in class, and that no technical expertise or extensive instructions are necessary, making the method available to all teachers.QC 20150618</p