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. 

As you prepare your Moodle course for next term, in addition to vital asynchronous activities, you will likely want to add a few videos of yourself or a screen recording of your lecture. By now you’re probably aware that UCL has a plethora of technologies. This is partly a necessity, as UCL teaching practices vary so no single tool will get the job done for everyone, but sometimes it’s a little unclear which to use.

 

To help you decide, Digital Education with help from the Digital Media team and IT for SLASH team has put together this comparison table of the three centrally supported media platforms: Lecturecast, Mediacentral and Microsoft Stream.

 

The table hopes to clarify some of the common questions; e.g.

• Does the platform allow students to download recordings?
• Can I upload a pre-recorded video e.g. a video recorded in PowerPoint?
• Can I restrict who views the video?
• Can I see analytics on whose watched the video?

 

If you need further advice on creating and sharing video, please contact digi-ed@ucl.ac.uk.

 

Updated 21 October 2020 to include graphics tablets and webcam options
Updated 5 January 2022 with minor updates to links

We start this blog post with a short exercise for the reader: search Google Images or an image library for the word teacher.

I hope that you see a range of diverse people in the pictures. But I bet that most of them will have a pen or chalk in their hand, and a board or surface at their side. The act of writing and talking as a form of instruction is perhaps the most commonly perceived characteristic of who a teacher is and what they do.

The move to remote teaching has made writing as a form of teaching more difficult. A mouse may be great for controlling a computer, but it’s hard to use it to write smoothly on screen.

So in this post, we will look at how we might continue to use writing as a form of teaching, even from home.

Before we start, a note on accessibility. Whilst we teach remotely, so of the facilities that our students might have relied upon (like captions, transcripts, note-takers or signers) might not be available, so we may need to make alternative accommodations. Please do think about this before you plan your teaching and contact Digital Education if you would like advice.

Using a visualiser at home

In the classroom or lecture hall, many rooms will have a visualiser (also called a document camera) for showing writing and objects. These are typically hooked up to a projection screen through the AV system and are also captured by lecture capture. UCL uses a mix of table-top visualiser and ceiling mounted visualisers from a company called Wolfvision.

You can also buy more consumer-level products in this category. At home I use an IPEZO VZ-R camera, which costs about £200.

The camera connects via USB and can be used in two ways:

• Directly as a webcam, either replacing your main video feed or in Zoom you can share a second camera in the same way you might share your screen
• Using the IPEVO Visualizer software which is available as a free download for multiple platforms, and then sharing this application

Either method works well, but I’d recommend the latter as webcam video is often heavily compressed. This method works well with all our supported platforms, including Lecturecast (Echo 360) Universal Capture Personal, Zoom, Microsoft Teams and Blackboard Collaborate.

The camera is compact but sturdy. It has an in-built light, and facilities such as zoom and autofocus, and can capture a surface slightly less than A3. It also has an inbuilt microphone which is likely to be closer to you when you are speaking than one in a laptop.

The software can control the features of the camera, and can make recordings that you could upload to Lecturecast, for example. The controls neatly get out of the way when they aren’t being used, so that you can focus on the content. The image below shows the auto-focus in operation, clearly capturing a book cover.

The Visualizer application can easily be shared in a Blackboard Collaborate room, and you can then move the window out of the way and focus on the participants. The image below shows me writing some simple maths on a notepad, captured by the camera, using the screen sharing feature of Collaborate to show this to other participants.

IPEVO offer another model, the V4K, for £100, which has a lower resolution sensor (but still good) and no light. Of course other companies are available, and I’ve heard recommendations of Genee and Aver models. These types of visualisers are often used in secondary schools, so any teachers you know may be able to give suitable advice.

One thing I particularly like about the IPEVO models is the design. The one I have folds fairly flat, so is easy to store away, so my living room doesn’t have to look like a lecture theatre. Here’s a comparison of its size when folded compared to a bottle of wine. And yes, it does fit in a wine rack.

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Writing on an iPad or other tablet

Using an Apple Pencil on an iPad or a stylus for other devices, you can use a notes or sketch app to write on an iPad. This works fine as a standalone process, but you can also use software such as Reflector to mirror your device to your PC or Mac and screen share it as part of a call using Blackboard Collaborate, Zoom etc., or to record it from your screen using Lecturecast Personal Capture. If you have a Mac, you can also plug in your USB to Lightning cable and use Quicktime to mirror your screen by selecting your iPad as the camera source (thanks to Dr Steven Schofield from UCL Physics and Astronomy for that tip).

The short clip below shows Steven leading a revision lecture with his students. He reports that “I gave a two hour live revision lecture today; I was able to use the screen mirroring software to share my iPad Mini screen with the class via Blackboard Collaborate. It went really well and I had good feedback from the students. I think the overall experience is so much better than just talking to prepared slides. ”

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Using a webcam

If you have a webcam that isn’t built in to your computer, you can use this too. We’ve tried a couple of webcams and it can work well, but may not have the full controls or handy features like the light that the VZ-R has.

If you have a laptop webcam above the screen, there’s  further option using a mirror to give you a whiteboard surface. Again IPEVO has an option for this, or you can look at making your own using a 3D printer or just cardboard cutouts. John Umekubo has blogged about this, and John Mitchell from UCL has put it into practice. The much lower cost means it could be a great option for students to show their workings.

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Using a graphics tablet

Graphics tablets are often associated with drawing and more artistic work, but can also be used for writing. It can be less natural as your writing is preserved only on screen rather than on the tablet itself, a difference between writing on paper. Wacom are the brand leader with many higher end products for artists, but for simple writing tasks more modest brands are also suitable. We’ve had good reports of the XP-Pen and Viekk brands. Feedback suggests that the size of the graphics tablet is more important than features like number of levels of pressure sensitivity if you are using it predominantly for writing rather than art.

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Using a mobile phone or tablet

You may have seen tweets where inventive teachers have rigged up their phones to use as cameras. But how do you do this?

Well, IPEVO provide an app for that too. To make this work, you need three things:

• An Apple or Android phone on the same network as your computer (PC, Mac, Chromebook and Linux supported)
• An installation of IPEVO iDocCam on your phone
• An installation of IPEVO Visualizer on your computer

Launch the app on your phone, and then the Visualizer software on your computer, and your phone will appear in the list of available cameras.

And here is an example of it in use, with my old IPhone SE acting as the camera:

The final bit is to rig the phone up in a secure way, about 40cm above your desk. You might use a desk mount, or a pile of books, or some blu tack and string. How  you do this is up to you, but this tweet from UCL’s Matt Whyndham might give you some inspiration. Happy writing!

For those new to UCL, Lecturecast is UCL’s automated lecture recording system.

It is designed for course tutors/administrators to record their lectures as supplemental resources and share them with their students via the respective Moodle course. Lecturecast is not a replacement for lecture attendance and is provided to complement lectures and provide an additional resource to support student learning.

Guidance on using Lecturecast is available via the Lecturecast Resource Centre

Preparing for 2019/2020

1. Staff can now schedule recordings for the 2019/2020 academic year. Note that to schedule a recording, the event must be timetabled via CMIS, take place in a Lecturecast-enabled teaching space and be less than 4 hours long. Staff will only be able to schedule events taking place within the next 3 months (on a rolling basis).
2. Ensure you unlink mappings to old Lecturecast recordings from your Moodle courses(s) and add a new link/mapping (s) for the 2019/2020 sections.

New for 19/20

You may notice a few improvements to the Lecturecast system for the 2019/2020 academic year. These include:

1. Student Analytics are now updated more frequently

The student engagement data on the Analytics tab in Sections (when viewing the list of recordings in Moodle) is now updated at least hourly (instead of once daily). Student interactions with class media and with the section as a whole are provided throughout the day, allowing staff to view data with closer to real-time status.

2. Schedule recordings for non-teaching events

It is now possible to schedule recordings for non-teaching events. The events must be CMIS timetabled, occur in a Lecturecast enabled room and be less than 4 hours long.

As these events are not associated with a module code, the recordings will be placed in the personal library of the staff member scheduling the recording. Staff can then download the recording and upload it onto a streaming server such as UCL Media Central.

Note:  Lecturecast is designed mainly for the recording of lectures. If you are looking to record a special event e.g. an inaugural lecture, conference and need a high quality recording then please contact Digital Media services video@ucl.ac.uk who provide video and editing services.

3. Universal Capture replaces Personal Capture

Action may be required:  If you are still using Personal Capture, please upload all video recordings immediately and install Universal Capture.

‘Universal Capture’ which is now available to download via the Lecturecast interface has replaced ‘Personal Capture’. Personal capture is no longer supported or available to download.  The Universal Capture tool allows staff to record audio, video and their laptop displays in much the same way as the Personal capture system but with a greater degree of reliability. Content is also packaged and uploaded as you record, meaning that the completed recording is available much sooner. To download Universal Capture, use the ‘Downloads’ link available from the settings icon in the Lecturecast section. Ensure you select Universal Capture: Personal. A video demo of Universal Capture is available on the the Echo360 support pages.

4. Pilot of automatic transcripts for Lecturecast recordings

Over the next few months, Digital Education along with several volunteers from across the university will be running a pilot of the Lecturecast ‘automatic speech recognition’ (ASR) functionality. ASR has the potential to provide invaluable support for students with hearing difficulties but can be a useful additional resource for all students. However, the system needs to be tested with a range of voices, accents, and subjects, including those with discipline-specific or specialist terminology, in order to assess the accuracy of the resulting transcripts and how much work might be involved to correct them. The project has been prompted by the legislation that came into effect last autumn to ensure that digital content is accessible by everyone, and we would also like to explore how useful students in pilot groups find the service.

For more information,contact digitalaccessibility@ucl.ac.uk

Training

To sign up or register an interest in upcoming training sessions, use the links below.

• An introduction to Lecturecast
• Lecturecast – dynamic teaching using the Active Learning Platform tools

Useful resources:

• Lecturecast Course analytics
• Lecturecast Resource Centre
• Lecturecast FAQs
• Lecturecast enabled teaching spaces
• For support, email: digi-ed@ucl.ac.uk

For the last four years, the Department of Science, Technology, Engineering and Public Policy (STEaPP) has been running a two-week programme called ‘How to Change the World’ (HtCtW) for undergraduate engineering students in the Faculty as part of the Integrated Engineering Programme. The aim of HtCtW is to enable students to work in multi-disciplinary teams and collaborate to create engineering solutions to an open-ended problem linked to a particular global challenge.

Due to the success of this format, the programme is being rolled out externally. It was piloted with members of the Royal Academy of Engineering (RAEng) in London in 2016, and now STEaPP is partnering with the RAEng and National Academy of Engineering to run a student programme for a cohort of 150 students (from China, UK and US) at the Global Grand Challenges Summit 2017 in Washington DC on 18–20 July.

Students will generate their own audio or video podcasts exploring how solving one or more of the Grand Challenges could impact real peoples’ lives for the better. These podcasts will be reviewed and a selection will be promoted across a range of professional networks and media channels, with career-enhancing benefits for participants.

Five members of STEaPP staff will travel to Washington DC and offer face-to-face facilitation at the Summit. In additional, the department is also offering online learning consultancy to the RAEng that enables us to develop, produce and release online learning materials to support the programme. Based on a ‘flipped classroom’ approach, we are use a combination of the Microsoft Office 365 tool and online cloud storage to set up a password-protected online portal where students can access information and reading materials to prepare for the programme. Using Dropbox’s “File Request” allows students at the Summit without an account to submit their deliverables.

We are also working with experts in media to give the students some unique insights into how best to communicate their message. Alok Jha (ITV News Science correspondent), Dr Kevin Fong (STEaPP Honorary Lecture and BBC science programme presenter) and Oliver Morton (the Economist) have been tasked with producing an online guide on how to produce a good podcast.

The use of a range of cloud services enable the partnership of UCL STEaPP, RAEng, British broadcast professionals and US-based organisations to work effectively together to design, develop and deliver this student programme. It is hoped that the experience of this collaborative work will help STEaPP to further develop our expertise in the use of learning technologies in both formal and informal learning curricula.

 

Alan Seatwo

Learning Technologist and E-Learning Champion at STEaPP

The UK Open University (2006) provide a useful introductory course, called Accessibility of eLearning, that will help you understand how to create accessible e-learning experiences that provide access for all. The course can be completed online, or downloaded in a number of common file formats, including for e-readers and as a PDF.

I would strongly suggest either completing the course, or reading the course materials, but if you don’t have time I’m going to summarise the key points in this post:

1. In 2006, disability affected 10-20% of every country’s population, and this number is growing.
2. In 2006, 15% of the UK population, over 16 years old, self-declared a disability.
3. A disabled person is one who has a mental or physical disability that has a substantial, long term (12 months or more), adverse effect on their ability to carry out normal day-to-day activities.
4. Around 1 in 10 men and 1 in 200 women have red-green colour blindness.
5. UK Universities are legally obligated to make reasonable, anticipatory adjustments to ensure those with disabilities are not discriminated against.
6. There are two views of disability. The medical model describes the problem of disability as stemming from the person’s physical or mental limitation. The social model sees disability as society restricting those with impairments in the form of prejudice, inaccessible design, policies of exclusion, etc.
7. Accessibility is about both technical and usable access for people with disabilities. For example, although a table of data may be technically accessible by a blind person using a screen reader, they may not be able to relate the data in each cell to its column or row heading, so the meaning of the data is lost in the process, rendering the table unusable for that person.
8. Computers enable even severely disabled people to communicate unaided, giving them independence and privacy that is not possible when they need to rely on human assistants.
9. When communicating online, a disability may not be visible, removing barriers caused by people’s reactions to the disability.
10. Creating accessible learning environments helps everyone, not just those with disabilities. For example, products that can be used by blind people are also useful for people whose eyes are busy*.

*This last point reflects my own preference for listening to academic papers while running or walking to work, when I would be otherwise unable to “read” the paper. As a student and full-time employee, being able to use this time to study enables me to manage my time effectively and merge my fitness routine, with study time. This is only possible because my lecturers, and many journals these days too, provide accessible documents that can be read out loud using my mobile smartphone.

This list brifly summarises the key points I drew from the OU’s Accessibility of eLearning course and demonstrates some of the ways we, as developers of online courses, can make better online learning experiences for all our students, including those with disabilities.

References

Open University (2016) Accessibility of E-Learning. [Online]. Available from: http://www.open.edu/openlearn/education/professional-development-education/accessibility-elearning/content-section-0 [Accessed: 13 June 2017].