March 18, 2021

Consider lecture capture to enhance student learning (Message to instructors)

This message was sent to all instructors across the University of Washington.

Dear Colleagues:

Thanks to all of you for your hard work and dedication in rising to the challenge of remote teaching during the COVID-19 crisis.

Over the past year, many of you have leveraged various instructional technologies, including lecture capture, for both synchronous and asynchronous teaching. By recording and posting lectures and other related materials, you’re teaching one set of students synchronously, while enabling others to learn asynchronously. This can be valuable to many students. Lecture capture allows students to review entire classes — or portions of them — more than once to better understand material they find especially difficult. Lecture capture also is helpful for students struggling with remote learning and those with disabilities, as well as students in other time zones and those with limited or unreliable internet service.

In light of this, student leaders have urged us to ask that all faculty consider using lecture capture in their classes, especially those that are lecture based. Given the difficulties that so many of our students are experiencing, we urge you to strongly consider using this technology where appropriate. Information on how to use lecture capture in your course this spring is available on the Teaching Remotely website.

Of course, we understand that some classes, such as smaller discussion-based courses, may not work well with this technique, and we respect your right to teach courses in a manner that is most pedagogically effective and appropriate.

Once we return to in-person teaching, we are looking to expand the number of courses that continue, or begin, to use lecture capture to improve student learning outcomes. As of now, Panopto-enabled classrooms on the Seattle campus have ample capacity to accommodate many more faculty; and we urge you to explore these resources for autumn 2021 and going forward.

To help us better understand any barriers to incorporating lecture capture or other remote teaching technologies, we’re asking instructors to complete a brief survey. The results from this survey will be used to improve the support and resources needed to expand these offerings and better meet student needs for learning as we begin to emerge from the COVID-19 crisis.

Thank you for all your ongoing efforts to provide UW students with the best possible academic experience.

Sincerely,

Ana Mari Cauce
President
Professor of Psychology

Mark A. Richards
Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs
Professor of Earth and Space Sciences