Overview

Temple University's Fox School of Business and Management is a leader in integrating advanced technologies to benefit pedagogy and learning outcomes. Familiar with the impact of Web-based lectures on student comprehension and retention, The Fox School sought a lecture capture solution that they could implement school-wide without incurring the cost and staffing burdens of traditional rich media technologies.

Automated Lecture Capture

The Fox School heard about an automated lecture capture and Web publishing system from Echo³⁶⁰, the leader in new media publishing solutions. The system offered an innovative way to make valuable course content accessible online.

The Echo³⁶⁰ System is the first lecture capture solution designed for automatic, unattended scheduled lecture capture. Its unique design enables administrators to set up lecture capture in any number of classrooms once for the entire semester. Professors teach the way they always do while the system works automatically in the background. The Echo³⁶⁰ System synchronizes and publishes the classroom experience – including the professor's remarks and any visuals projected during the lecture – as an interactive, rich media record of the classroom experience that students can review online or on-the-go via integrated podcasting support.

"Faculty members are used to coming into class and presenting their knowledge and experiences to students...and all of that accumulated knowledge is lost when class is over. Now with the Echo³⁶⁰ System, students and teachers can play it again," said David Feeney, director of digital education at Fox.

Building the Business Case

During its first term of use, the Echo³⁶⁰System captured nearly 40 hours per week of class content from Fox's undergraduate, graduate and executive MBA courses. The system's enterprise software design enabled The Fox School to automatically publish rich media "echoes" to its existing course management system, Blackboard. Students were able to play back rich media lectures by simply clicking a link in their familiar Blackboard course module.

The Fox School has found that replaying material from finance and economics classes helps business students master complex information. Students can also review material they may have missed during class, such as graphs and formulas, at their own pace.

"Easy review and rehearsal benefits all learners, but especially students learning quantitative business concepts. Such students maximize their benefit by easily replaying Echo³⁶⁰ lectures as many times as needed," said Feeney.

In addition, the ability to capture everything presented during class enables instructors to demonstrate all types of business software, like Excel and MyMathLab, as well as statistical data pulled from the Web. The ability of class captures to help students comprehend and retain classroom lessons was confirmed in a recent survey of Fox's faculty and students. Eighty percent of respondents said that the Echo³⁶⁰System improved student learning. One-third of students surveyed said it had helped them earn a better grade and nearly 95% said they would choose a class with the Echo³⁶⁰System over one without it.

The Future

The technology's benefits even extend to continuing education. The Fox School plans to use the Echo³⁶⁰System to deliver pre-class preparation materials to international students as part of an accelerated EMBA program. The school is also designing MBA curriculum that incorporates class captures into the coursework, and undergraduate and graduate admissions officers are building a library of Web-based presentations on everything from admissions criteria to job placement.

According to John DeAngelo, associate dean of information technology at the Fox School, "We have only begun to explore the Echo³⁶⁰System's potential. As the product evolves, we expect to make it a permanent part of our new, techno-rich and student-centered business building, Alter Hall."