Language Center instructors have captured more than 1500 student presentations in the Language Lab Teaching Spaces since 2008.

Summary: This blog post describes the Language Lab’s faculty friendly “workflows that just work” for in class video capture and makes recommendations for the immediate future based on programmatic need and emerging technologies.

Presentational language is one of the primary modes of expression emphasized in Language Center foreign language curricula. In order to support in-class video capture of student presentations, the Language Lab designed self-service video capture carts. Using the Lab’s capture carts in combination with Lab studio amenities and CourseWork, Language Center instructors have recorded more than 1500 student presentations in at least eight languages. The Lab has, in addition, recorded thousands of other video clips on subjects ranging from Arabic calligraphy to American Sign Language. The carts are simple, flexible, inexpensive, and, above all, faculty friendly.

Capture Cart Deconstructed

Hardware
Digital Video Camcorder with FireWire Out
Laptop with Firewire In Port
FireWire Cable
Rhode Shotgun Mic
(Optional)Articulating Arm with Tripod Mount and Handle
Software
Quicktime Player

The articulating arm improves stability and flexibility. Quicktime Player captures and compresses in real time so there is no class time wasted rendering. Files are securely stored in CourseWork, Stanford's LMS. Use of Rhode shotgun mic eliminates lost wireless mics, moving parts, and reduces anxiety for talent and camera person

The video capture workflow that the Lab uses now “just works” and is popular with instructors, but a browser-based capture system is greatly needed. Such a system would eliminate the need to manually upload video files and would allow for enriched metadata collection and improved annotation capability. Such a system is essential moving forward as the present workflows require software that is being discontinued .

Moving forward the Lab would like to improve not only scaling of video capture but also the production values of the content. Ease of use was enough to for instructor buy in on the present capture cart setup, but improvements in camera quality and ingestion systems calls for an updated solution to better render the higher quality student performances that upgraded classroom infrastructure enables.

Put more simply, with the advent of rear projection interactive whiteboards, much higher image and sound quality is achievable. These production values (better picture, resolution, and sound) relate directly to improved learning because they effect learner attention. Compare the experience of watching public access or local TV news with network television and high end advertising. Newer rear projection systems allow the studio classrooms fully light the talent who will be speaking in front of bright projection images. This will eliminate the all too common image of a student standing in the dark against bright slides or vice verse. The same can be said for improved mics.

In short, as technology infrastructure advances, so will the expectations of the users who employ that infrastructure. We have done the proof of concept and workflows. Now we can improve production quality. Expensive, built-in lecture capture systems are not the answer. The new capture cart may likely be an iPad sending video directly into the proposed ingestion system.

When the Digital Language Lab was originally built in 1998, it was wrapped in a software  platform, namely in a Learning Management System (eventually CW). A wrapper in the form of a common streaming platform for video capture and playback would serve many different constituencies in any state of the art instructional facility.