ARCHIVED: What is the Podcast Course Capture project?

On this page:

• Description
• Faculty expectations
• Technical expectations
• How to participate
• Providing feedback
• Options for participants
  • Record a class session
  • Find your class sessions
  • Subscribe to your course feed
  • Hide the Oncourse Podcast tool
  • Hide videos until you approve them
  • Approve your videos

Description

The Podcast Course Capture project is a pilot study of how to best provide automated classroom capture and podcast distribution to Indiana University faculty and students.

The project is at the beginning of a three-year effort with the following goals:

• Gauging demand for, and interest in, automated course capture at IU
• Benchmarking hardware and software combinations for maximum cost effectiveness
• Gathering user feedback in a continuous cycle of development and evaluation

The project aims to automatically capture audio, video, presentation slides, document camera video, and other content from regularly scheduled classes, and distribute them via RSS as a podcast to Oncourse.

In addition to serving the needs of IU faculty, students, and staff, the project is also part of IU's commitment and collaboration on the Opencast project. For more about the Opencast project, see the Opencast Community Projects page.

The fall pilot is at a very early stage and is considered a proof of concept.

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Faculty expectations

Select faculty who teach in properly equipped classrooms will be asked to voluntarily participate in the fall pilot to help with testing and refinement of the course capture system. Currently there are four classrooms on the Bloomington campus, and three classrooms in Indianapolis.

Because the system is in a pre-release state, participating faculty should not rely on the class capture recordings as an integral part of their courses. The pilot project should not require intervention from the instructor. The course capture is automated according to the schedule of classes. Recording will begin promptly at the published start time, and end promptly at the published end time. There is currently no exception available to this feature.

Note: Recording a class session has many privacy implications. Confidential information on the instructor's computer may also be captured in the recording. Using the Crestron to blank the projector will not prevent activity from being captured, because the signal from the computer and other devices is still present. Some examples of situations to avoid are:

• Looking up a student's grades or other personal information during class time
• Checking personal email
• Working on personal finances or visiting a personal financial institution's website
• A one-on-one meeting with a student, in case the class starts late or ends early

We do not have any editing or preview capability in the pilot phase.

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Technical expectations

To successfully record a class session, observe the following technical guidelines:

• Prior to the published start time of a class, you must route a video signal of some kind to the projector with the Crestron unit. To learn about the A-V controls, see ARCHIVED: At IUPUI, how do I use the media equipment installed in my classroom?, or contact your campus Support Center.
• You need a microphone, so the system can capture the audio portion of the presentation. Prior to recording any class meeting, Classroom Technology Services (CTS) staff will inform the instructor about which microphone to use and how to properly place it.

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How to participate

To participate in the pilot:

• You need to be teaching in a properly equipped classroom. The following classrooms are eligible:

  IUB			IUPUI
  Optometry (OP) 133			Engineering and Technology (ET) 202
  OP 105			Business/SPEA (BS) 2001
  OP 111			Nursing School (NU) 112
  Business (BU) 109

  
  
• You should be willing to continue with the pilot through the semester and provide feedback, while understanding the proof-of-concept nature of the current phase.

After meeting the requirements, you can volunteer to participate by contacting the Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL) at IUPUI or the Center for Innovative Teaching and Learning (CITL) at IUB:

• IUPUI: Email Randy Newbrough, or call 317-274-1300.
• IUB: Email Kathryn Propst, or call 812-855-3058.

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Providing feedback

The current phase of this project is dependent not only on finding hardware and software bugs, but exploring user feedback to determine future feature enhancements to better meet user expectations.

Participants are encouraged to send feedback using the contact form on the Podcast Portal help page (select Podcast Course Capture Project from the drop-down list).

To see the current status of the Course Capture System, or to report issues relating to delivery of videos to your course RSS feed in iTunes U, visit the Course Capture Status Page.

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Options for participants

After becoming part of the pilot program, you can:

• Record a class session: To record a class session, start and end your class on time, and conduct your class normally, but follow these guidelines:
  • Route a video signal to the projector prior to the official start of your class.
  • Turn on the microphone prior to the official start time of your class.
  • If you use a wireless microphone, turn it off after class.
  
  
• Find your class sessions: To find your course's captured sessions:
  1. Go to your course's Oncourse page.
  2. On the left, click Podcasts.
  3. Click the Course Capture tab.
  
  
• Subscribe to your course feed: To subscribe to your course's RSS feed, on your session's Course Capture page:
  1. Copy the provided RSS URL.
  2. Paste the URL into your podcatcher of choice.
  
  
• Hide the Oncourse Podcast tool: As you can with every tool in Oncourse, you can elect to hide the Course Capture tool. For instructions, see ARCHIVED: In Oncourse, how do I add, remove, hide, or reorder tools?
• Hide videos until you approve them: Although the ability to hide videos is not officially supported, you may feel reluctant to make your videos immediately available in the RSS feed. If so, you can request to hide your videos until they are previewed and approved:
  1. Use the contact form on the Podcast Portal help page (select Podcast Course Capture Project from the drop-down list).
  2. Provide your name, course, and the Oncourse site ID for your course (see ARCHIVED: In Oncourse, how do I determine my site's siteID?).
  3. State that you would like your lectures hidden until approval.

  Note: There is currently no way to control access to podcast feeds outside Oncourse. This means that if someone sends the feed URL to a person outside the class, there is no way to prevent that person from accessing the feed and the media files contained in it.

• Approve your videos: If you requested to have your lecture capture videos hidden until you approve them, you'll access a web form (presently under construction) where you can download and preview your videos, and indicate whether or not to include them in your class RSS feed.

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