The Promise and Possibility of New Lecture Capturing Software

Our work to enable technology-aided learning in the classrooms of today will help extend the classrooms of the future to wherever students are learning and engaging with their instructors and peers.

Case in point: UB will be evaluating and implementing a new lecture capture solution in the coming months. We’re approaching this explicitly as an opportunity to find what’s next in education technology, and implement it here and now at UB.

This means looking for an option that promises more than simple audio/video recording and PowerPoint synchronization. Our next solution needs to offer the capability to capture whatever an instructor is doing during instruction, on- and off-screen. And it needs to bring students into the fold by allowing them to follow along on their devices, during and after class, making notes for studying later as they go along.

In other words, we aren’t just synchronizing a lecture—we’re synchronizing people, by making mobile notetaking and real-time collaboration possible. Imagine an instructor saying “heads up, this is going to be on the exam,” and students being able to mark that moment in real time and go back later, on a laptop or even a smartphone, right to that point in the lecture to refresh their memory. We already know about the power of context-dependent learning; let’s find and implement technology that expands that context to make learning more efficient.

There’s so much to consider when we look to the future of technology and learning. Concepts like artificial intelligence, deep learning and virtual assistants will almost certainly be changing the landscape of instruction and administration in higher education, sooner than we think—and that change brings with it the potential for a better learning environment for students and instructors alike.

That’s why we're looking ahead. Just as UB cares enough to invest in the learning experience of today, we need to bring the advantages of future technology to the ones doing the learning—and those teaching them—today.