Using Lecture Capture

This inclusive teaching guide is aligned to Baseline Standard 1 and the Professional Standards Framework (Advance HE website) A2. It provides general advice on how you can make your lecture recordings more inclusive when using the equipment provided in teaching rooms.

For guidance on using the lecture capture system (Mediasite) please see the Digital Education Systems Help guides.

Maximise audio quality

Ensure you know where the microphones are in the room and deliver your lecture in their vicinity. There may be more than one microphone (or even a radio microphone) in the room, so you are not restricted to standing at the podium.
Always ensure your voice is being captured by a microphone. Asking whether students can “hear you at the back” is ineffective, as those who cannot hear you will not respond. Also, students may not feel comfortable disclosing a hearing difficulty in front of peers.
Some of your learners will use recorded lectures to review material they did not understand e.g. because of a disability which means they are unable to process or even hear all of your lecture. Other learners may be experiencing your lecture for the first time through the recording. This may be because they have a long-term medical condition which affects their attendance.
Always face your students when you speak. This will help those who lipread to interpret your speech more easily, as well as allowing cameras in the room to capture your face.

Repeat or reformulate points that your students make during lectures. This will benefit the whole class because they may not have heard their peer speak and will also ensure your students’ contributions are captured in the recording.
Repeating points also helps your students with hearing difficulties to continue to interact in the lecture, especially if you are using a loop system.
Paraphrasing the wording your students use when making a point in a lecture, exposes learners to a different way of describing an idea. This allows the class to benefit from different explanations of the same theory.

Where possible use smart screens or document cameras to capture hand-written equations, derivations notes and diagrams.
Writing on a whiteboard is lost to lecture capture in rooms without cameras, and often difficult to see even in rooms in which there is video capture.
Where possible, use a document camera when displaying physical objects or apparatus.
Small amounts of writing can be effectively captured for your students who are watching lecture content for the first time, as well as for your students who are reviewing lectures they attended.

Use the ‘pause’ button during your teaching session when your students are given a topic to discuss and when you intend to conduct an activity which would add no value to the recording.
While there is a risk that you may forget to turn the lecture capture back on, reducing the need to edit captured content means that you will be able to upload it more quickly without increased burden on your workload. This allows your students to significantly benefit from your captured session by providing access to the recording at a time you have identified it to be pedagogically useful.

Guide written by Dr Felix Janeway | Updated October 2019 by Kirsten Thompson