SUCCESS STORY UCD

ORIGINAL NEEDS AND CHALLENGES

Back in 2014, the University College Dublin (UCD) College of Business was seeking to enhance its eLearning infrastructure to expand and improve the range of online teaching and learning activities available. The Business eLearning team identified a growing demand for lecture capture technology for distance learning, group presentations, marketing events, and seminars.

UCD College of Business was thus determined to install a fixed lecture capture system on several rooms on campus so they can offer “anytime-anywhere learning”.

The challenge was to identify a tool that could not only record lectures, broadcast live events, produce branded and high quality videos but also store large video files and have a user-friendly playback tool for students.

So they started looking for a solution that would allow them to easily capture a class, edit and publish the recordings rapidly, store them securely in a library of classroom recordings and make them more accessible.

The Business eLearning team knew that they had a challenge on their hands, but they were determined to find the right solution to address this growing demand.

THE SOLUTION

After a tendering process UbiCast’ solutions were identified as the most suitable tools to record, store and stream videos easily.

UCD has been using the Miris box developed by UbiCast to capture their lectures. For a unique rendering, they use the Dynamic Rich Media technology to record multicamera automatically and allow the students, once the video has been published, to choose the video source they want to display full screen. The lecture capture recording process can be scheduled and automated for the teachers who want to make the recording available to their students.

Once the recordings are over, the videos and their transcription are directly uploaded to the teachers’ personal channels on UCD’s private Nudgis platform.

Nudgis is a private platform developed by UbiCast and made for teachers to record, store and stream interactive videos. After that, recordings can be reviewed and edited by the academics, enriched with time-based annotations, chapters and activities thanks to Nudgis interactive player to make learning more captivating for the students!

Finally, the academics share the video content in a few clicks within Brightspace by D2L - the LMS UCD is using - thanks to the Nudgis plugin. The students watch replays directly within Brightspace and spend quality time reviewing the content on their own schedule to better prepare for exams.

After publishing the videos, the teachers can access viewing statistics to ensure the content is suitable and understood, thus allowing a more fitted experience easily open to feedback.

Today, UCD College of Business has equipped 15 rooms with Miris boxes and over 200 academics and 8,000 students have been taking advantage of the solution to enhance their teaching and learning experience.

ENABLING STUDENTS TO BETTER LEARN AND RETAIN

When it comes to transformation, making sure that those directly affected by it - i.e. the students and the teachers - are seeing this change as a step forward is crucial. Thankfully, the introduction of UbiCast’s video solutions has been seen as a positive development for the College of Business since it has empowered teachers to:

• Revolutionise learning through blended experiences.
• Effortlessly capture captivating lectures.
• Support and embrace the flipped classroom teaching strategy.
• Centralise all College of Business media.
• Unify branding across all impactful videos.

In the same way, student feedback has been overwhelmingly positive! Students can now use the recordings for assignment and exam study, to catch up on missed lectures, or to master challenging topics or concepts.

In a recent survey conducted at UCD Lochlann Quinn School and UCD Michael Smurfit Graduate Business School, figures show there is no doubt about its efficiency. For almost 95% of students having lecture recordings available has improved their learning.

How well do you agree with this statement: «Having lecture recordings available improved my learning»?

Recording lectures has thus proven to be an effective tool for enhancing learning and making educational content more accessible and flexible for the students.
It helps them review the material whenever they want and at their own pace, it provides a better accessibility, and it accommodates different learning styles.
And the feedback UCD got from the students themselves could not highlight this more!

As a sign that recordings are perfectly integrated into the learning style, the average viewing time by students per session has increased from 20 to 25 minutes between the first and the second term of 2022.
Similarly, 76% of the students said that having access to lecture recordings was “very important”, and 16% said it was “important”.

How important is it for you to have access to lecture recordings?

GOING BEYOND THE TRADITIONAL LECTURE CAPTURE

Before the pandemic, UCD faced a challenge in encouraging teachers to adopt new technologies in the classroom. While students praised and benefited from the integration of these tools, there was a noticeable reluctance among teachers.

They feared that technology would lead to empty classrooms and undermine their teaching methods, including concerns over intellectual property. Similar hesitations were observed when the Learning Management System (LMS) was introduced, with teachers reluctant to upload their PowerPoint presentations.

As the pandemic struck and remote learning became the norm, UCD embraced the use of short educational videos, or reusable learning objects as they like to call it. The Nudgis platform enabled teachers to create these videos directly from their computers thanks to the WebStudio tool, and their popularity soared.

Teachers began to realise that these videos were not merely a time-consuming endeavour or a response to students’ immediate needs. Instead, they understood the value of short videos that could benefit students beyond a single class or term.

Now, in the present day, UCD has witnessed a remarkable shift in attitudes. Statistics reveal higher engagement levels compared to the pre-pandemic period, indicating that teachers have become less reluctant to be filmed by cameras.

In the same way, the concept of reusable learning objects has evolved beyond lecture capture, marking a significant transformation in UCD’s approach to education.

The university is now exploring new frontiers and even contemplating the idea of launching an Online Master’s Degree that would harness the power of these videos to deliver a comprehensive and engaging educational experience. By capitalising on the potential of educational videos using UbiCast’ solutions, UCD aspires to create an innovative and inclusive learning environment, transcending the limitations of traditional education.