Information for Faculty

Introduction

The College of Natural Sciences Dean's Office is making available to faculty teaching in five auditoriums in Welch Hall the option of having their lectures recorded for later viewing on the web by their students.  Many colleges and schools on our campus have similar projects underway, each with certain unique aspects.  This service is funded by student information technology (ITAC) fees.  The system has been designed and is operated by the Technology Classroom Team in the Office of the Associate Dean for Information Technology.  The recording of class lectures is a natural extension of our standardized technology classroom project and the technical leader of both projects is Dr. Kurt Bartelmehs.

Using this Service

Our philosophy is that the recording of lectures should be non-intrusive, and recent technological advances have made that possible.  No recording equipment will  be visible in the classroom.  No technical staff will be present.  Students may not even be able to tell that the lecture is being recorded.
  1. If you're unfamiliar with this service, visit the Lectures on Demand home page, follow the "getting started" instructions, and watch a sample lecture, much as your students would do.
  2. Contact the Office of the Associate Dean for Information Technology and give us permission to record your lectures.
  3. Tell your students the URL for this web site (cns.utexas.edu/lectures) and the user name / password for your class, which we will provide to you.
  4. Keep teaching as your normally do, remembering to wear the microphone and remembering that only what you project onto the left projection screen - as seen from the audience - will be recorded.
  5. Let us know if you would like us to train your TA's, so they can give your students individual help using this service.
  6. During the semester, contact us if you would like to change anything about the recording of your lectures or their availability to your students.

Rights and Ownership

We consider the faculty member to be the sole owner of their lectures.  We will not include lectures in this service without the permission of the faculty member.  We will always respect requests by faculty to discontinue the recording of lectures, to change the password that controls access to the lectures, or to delete any or all lectures from our servers.  We will do nothing with the recorded lectures beyond making them available on our server.  We are not in the business of publishing or distributing course materials.

Pedagogy

Everyone agrees that students can't absorb all the material presented to them during a lecture.  Most learning takes place outside the classroom, often when students are motivated by a homework assignment or upcoming exam.  To support learning outside the classroom, students take lecture notes and faculty provide supplementary materials.  Recorded lectures are yet another study aid.

Our goals are simple but lofty:  We want to increase the student's understanding of the material.  We want them to ask better questions in class and during review sessions.  We want them to make better grades.  With success comes satisfaction.  We hope students will have a greater appreciation for the subject area and will want to take follow-on courses.  We hope this satisfaction will be reflected in course/instructor surveys.  It is beyond the scope of our project to study the impact of recorded lectures on student success, but we will gladly cooperate with anyone interested in such a study.

We recognize that students have different learning styles and that recorded lectures will not equally benefit all students.  As with any study aid, recorded lectures can be misused.  They may lead to a false sense of security and even negatively impact a student's performance in a course.  Students must learn how to effectively incorporate recorded lectures into their studies and will undoubtedly need our guidance in doing so.