As per the UCL retention policy, any Zoom-recorded content in Lecturecast will be deleted if it meets the following criteria: 

• Zoom recordings that have never been shared with a Lecturecast course section 
• Zoom recordings that have never been viewed.

Staff members impacted by this will be contacted with further details. Should they wish to retain these recordings, they are advised to ensure a copy is stored in their Zoom account, unless they have manually deleted them. Alternatively, a copy of the recording can be downloaded before the 11th March 2024 by following the instruction below.  

• Download the recordings to your local device  

 Please note: Teaching events captured or uploaded to Lecturecast (Echo360) will not be affected. 

If you have any questions regarding this matter, please get in touch with the Lecturecast Support Team and we will respond as promptly as possible. 

The ‘Getting Started with Moodle’ course has been updated in light of the Moodle 4.2 upgrade*. Additionally, we are pleased to introduce the ‘Getting Started with Lecturecast (Echo360)’ course.

These two self-paced courses cover the basics of using Moodle and Lecturecast (Echo360). They are aimed at UCL staff who are new to Moodle and Lecturecast as well as those wishing to brush up on their knowledge.

The courses provide a series of video and written guides, links to further resources and interactive activities. As they complete the course, staff are encouraged to practice using a Moodle Test course.

*Please note, the ‘Getting Started with Moodle‘ course does not focus on the Moodle 4.2 upgrade, for guidance and updates about this, please use the Moving to Moodle 4.2 self-paced course https://42-training.preview-moodle.ucl.ac.uk/course/view.php?id=15

Getting started with Moodle

The estimated completion time is up to 2 hours or 3 hours if the assessment is completed. The course covers how to:

• Navigate: overview of how to navigate the Moodle homepage and course page
• Build: learn how to add resources and activities
• Access: give students and colleagues access to your course

The course can be accessed via the following link https://moodle.ucl.ac.uk/course/view.php?id=24915

Please note this is a self-paced course which you can complete in your own time. You also have the option to receive a certificate at the end of the course.

After completing the course, staff can get further support by getting in touch via email or by booking a 15 min consultancy session.

Getting started with Lecturecast (Echo360)

The estimated completion time is 1:30 hours, and the course covers the following:

• Lecturecast Overview
• 3-step training guide for beginners
• Advance training

The course can be accessed via the following link Course: Getting started with Lecturecast (Echo360) (ucl.ac.uk)

Lecturecast online live training

In anticipation of the year ahead, we are also offering online live training sessions to those engaged in preparation for next year’s Lecturecast content. Moreover, we’re committed to tailoring this training to address other pertinent needs within the Lecturecast (Echo360) platform.

If you’re interested or know colleagues who could benefit, kindly complete the form, and we’ll contact you shortly.

Lecturecast sections for the new 2023/24 academic year are now available. All Lecturecast activity links in Moodle are copied over from the previous year’s course during a rollover, but students will not be able to open the links and view these recordings until the new Moodle course has been linked to its Lecturecast section.

Before making a Moodle course available to students, course teams need to link their course to the new 2023/24 section as follows:

• Go to your new Moodle course and select any existing Lecturecast links.

• Once you click on the link, you will be prompted to choose the new Lecturecast section. Use the drop-down list(s) to select the term, course, and section you want to link to.

• Then select ‘Link to the Section Home’ to link your new Moodle course directly to the section class list.

• Click ‘LINK CONTENT’ to complete the configuration.
• • Once you link through, you are automatically enrolled as an instructor in the relevant Lecturecast section for next year.
  • All the Lecturecast links in the rolled-over Moodle course will now be linked to next year’s session in Lecturecast.

Please note that to reuse one or more recordings from the previous year, you still need to make a copy of the recording and then share the copy with next year’s section. Please follow the instructions available at Reuse recordings from previous years.

The Zoom/Lecturecast integration is changing…

As of Friday, August 4th 2023 the integration between Zoom and Lecturecast will be changing to an opt-in model. This means that by default your Zoom recordings will not be ingested automatically into your Lecturecast/Echo360 library unless you change your configuration settings.

What does this mean for you?
– If you choose to opt-in, all your Zoom recordings will automatically be stored in Lecturecast for future reference and to be shared with your students (this is advisable only if the majority of your Zoom recordings are teaching related such as lectures or tutorials)
– If you take no action, your recorded Zoom sessions will no longer be automatically stored in Lecturecast but you can still manually upload teaching related recordings by following the instructions in the ‘Zoom recordings in Lecturecast’ miniguide.

To opt-in, please visit the settings section of your Lecturecast account and enable the “Automatically copy Zoom recordings to Echo360” option. Please see the miniguide for detailed instructions.

We understand that everyone has different preferences regarding the recording of lectures, and this change aims to provide you with more control over your Zoom recordings.

If you have any questions, concerns or need further assistance, please don’t hesitate to reach out to our support team at lecturecast@ucl.ac.uk

From 20th September 2022, media transcripts will be automatically applied to the closed captions track if they meet the 90% confidence score threshold.

We have activated automatic transcription and closed captions by default in Lecturecast as an additional supporting tool to provide fully accessible videos for our students as part of UCL’s digital strategy.

Aside from being an aid to viewers with auditory impairment, transcripts and captions can be extremely useful as a study tool.  Students often search large amounts of text using keywords to pinpoint passages of interest; Lecturecast transcripts, which are searchable and synchronised with the recording, allow similar searches of video presentations.

Lecturecast has built-in ASR (automatic speech recognition) to produce recording transcripts. Transcripts are automatically created for any media uploaded to Lecturecast and are available to viewers once a recording’s audio file has been processed.

Closed Captions use the same ASR file as the transcript but are not available if they do not meet the 90% confidence score threshold or until the ASR file has been ‘applied’ to a recording (until then the CC button in the player will be inactive).

Closed captions will NOT be automatically applied to:

• New recordings with a confidence score lower than 90%
• New Zoom videos automatically transferred to Lecturecast
• Older recordings made prior to the 20th September 2022.

Closed captions can still be manually applied using the ‘apply to CC’ button in the transcript editor after review/corrections are made.

See below an example of what a transcribed lecture with closed captions would look like:

 

Further information and detailed instructions are available on the ‘Transcripts and closed captions in Lecturecast (ASR)’ mini guide.

Please contact lecturecast@ucl.ac.uk with any questions.

 

If you are planning on using MS Teams as part of your students’ teaching and learning experience there are a few things that you should be aware of, and some things that you can do to create a more cohesive experience.

Firstly, MS Teams is not integrated with Lecturecast, Moodle or Portico. This means that there is no automatic mechanism for adding students to a team, nor an ability to create MS Teams meetings from within Moodle or for the recordings to automatically be added to Lecturecast.

However, we can use Office 365 tools to bulk add members (students) to MS Teams teams, and there are some things we can do in Moodle to create a more cohesive experience for our students.

Bulk enrolment to a MS Teams team

If you have the names and email addresses of those you want to add to a team, you can do so via a .csv file and Power Automate. Power Automate is available via Office 365.

Email addresses need to be in the form username@ucl.ac.uk – on my instance this would be cceasah@ucl.ac.uk or the process will fail.

Although username is not available in Portico, it is available from the Moodle Gradebook export. This can be in MS Excel format, then an append operation can be done ito create username@ucl.ac.uk.

Step-by-step details can be found via the following external blog post: Adding bulk users from a .csv or Excel file to a Microsoft Teams team with Power Automate

You will create a flow that looks like this:

Alternatively, you can make use of the Team link and ask students to add themselves as Team members. For more information see: Create a link or a code for joining a team

Adding a scheduled Teams meeting to Moodle

Teams meetings can only be created in MS Teams. You can create a meeting for your Team, however, anyone outside of the team that joins the meeting will not be able to view the chat. This is not ideal if you plan on having guests. Or, you can create an event and either invite a mailing list, if you have one, or invite yourself.

For more information see: Schedule a meeting in Teams

Scheduled meetings can be added to a Moodle course via the URL resource. This should be added in the corresponding section for that week’s learning and labelled in a meaningful way. See the Connected Learning Baseline for guidance.

This will then enable your students to view the events in the context of the rest of their learning and ensure all activities can be accessed from one place.

Adding a Teams meeting to the Calendar and Upcoming Events block

Unlike Zoom activities, these Teams meetings will not show automatically in the Calendar and Upcoming Events block. If Activity Completion is enabled, we can set an Expect completed on date and time for the URL resource. This will then show in the Upcoming Events block. It can also be viewed in the calendar alongside other activities.

 

 

 

 

 

 

By adding the activity to the Upcoming events block it increases the visibility of the event to students and helps them plan and manage their time.

Making Teams meetings recordings available to students

The recommended platform for making recordings available to students is Lecturecast(Echo360). As there is no integration between Teams and Echo360, recordings need to be downloaded from MS Stream and then uploaded to your library on the Echo360 platform before sharing to Moodle. It is generally recommended not to share MS Stream links directly with students.

Other considerations

If you intend to share files in Channels or during Teams meetings think carefully about where these files will go and how they will be organised. Files can very easily get lost if they are not well named or stored in a meaningful structure. It should be noted that files cannot be moved between Channels within the Teams interface, this can only be done via Sharepoint. Learn more about working with files in MS Teams.

When using multiple platforms it’s very important to clarify which platforms will be used when, and for what. It is also important to set boundaries. Where possible Moodle should be the main hub for teaching and learning.

Lecturecast Live is a new feature within Lecturecast, UCL’s video capturing service, and installed across 180 teaching spaces. It now facilitates live streaming of in-classroom sessions, which remote students can access via their Moodle courses in the same manner as Lecturecast recorded teaching events. This is one of the basic hybrid teaching options introduced for the 21/22 academic year.

The live streaming function should be selected when scheduling modular events for which remote students need synchronous video transmission of a teaching event. UCL is a campus-based institution with the primary mode of teaching and learning designed to be face to face, and thus live streaming is not enabled by default.

Scheduling Lecturecast Live 

Course administrators will first access Lecturecast Scheduler and complete the initial steps to search for a CMIS booked and confirmed event. Once the teaching event is located and its tickbox is selected, users can either select ‘Create Event’ if it has not yet been scheduled for capture or ‘Edit Event’ to modify an already scheduled capture event. Lecturecast Live is an option listed within ‘Additional Capture Info’ (see image).

The box next to ‘Enable live stream’ must be ticked and the schedule saved. Please see step 3.3 in the Create & Edit an Individual Schedule Lecturecast Scheduler guidance.  

Bulk scheduling with live streaming has also been enabled. Please note that it can only be used when creating new schedules.

Moodle course administrators and tutors will not need to take any additional steps in Moodle to link and enable live streams than they have for other Lecturecast events. 

 

Accessing Lecturecast Live 

Students will not need to take any additional steps in Moodle to access live streams than they have for other Lecturecast recordings. 

Both students and staff will see which sessions have been scheduled for live streaming, or are currently live streaming, by the addition of a ‘LIVE’ icon to the right of the event name within Echo360 (see image). Upcoming live streams are in grey while current live streams are in green. 

The video interface will open once the event is selected. If the live stream is upcoming then students and staff will see a countdown until the live event begins. If the event is currently live streaming then students and staff will need to click on the bottom left option ‘Show Live Stream’* (see image). We recommend reminding students of this step should they encounter difficulties starting the live stream. 

 

*We are providing feedback to Echo360 on student and staff experience in accessing the live streaming function. Please contact lecturecast@ucl.ac.uk with any comments and suggestions. 

 

Benefits 

• Fully integrated with Moodle so students will access live streaming teaching events in the same way that they currently access Lecturecast recordings. 

• Live streaming is automatic once scheduled. 

• Students have the same view as Lecturecast recordings, which include the in-room video feed of the lectern and a feed of the presentation materials shared using the in-room audio-visual system. Audio continues to be captured using in-room mics. 

• If students have connectivity issues, they can reconnect to the live stream or view the recording via Moodle once the teaching event is completed and the video has been processed and made available. 

• Teaching staff can access viewing analytics as they would with any Lecturecast recording. 

• Can be combined with Moodle activity completion tracking. 

• Available via web browser so no additional software required. 

Considerations 

• Of the basic hybrid options for 2021/22, Lecturecast Live is the least interactive for remote students taking part in synchronous teaching and learning because it is a one-way video stream. 
• There may be a ten second delay or more for those viewing the live stream.

Future roadmap 

• The Lecturecast Scheduler tool will continue to be enhanced to further facilitate the scheduling of live streaming. 

 

Documentation 

Detailed guidance on using Lecturecast, including the scheduling of live streaming, can be found in the Lecturecast Resource Centre wiki.  

Resources for basic hybrid teaching options can be found via the following: 

Basic Hybrid Teaching in UCL’s Spaces for Term 1 of 2021-22  

Support for staff teaching on-campus and online students together  

UCL Education Planning FAQs and Town Halls 2021-22 

 

Case Studies 

Echo360 Webcasting & Livestreaming articles https://echo360.com/category/webcasting-live-streaming/  

Digital Education are keen to understand which live teaching tool you use and perhaps more importantly how you use it. Please contact lecturecast@ucl.ac.uk if you would be willing to share your experiences in a case study.