The team is delighted to announce that Victoria University (VU) has recently joined the Echo360 Lectopia community, becoming the twentieth institution to license the system in Australia.
Commencing with an initial deployment of 10 venues by March 2009, VU aims to expand to 30 venues by the end of the year, supporting teaching and learning activities across seven campuses. Echo360 Capture Appliances will be deployed for audio, data and video capture.
The team is very happy to announce that Scotch College has recently joined the Echo360 Lectopia community, and
thereby becomes the first member of the community from the K-12 sector.
Scotch College is one of Australia's leading schools for boys and is particularly renowned in Western Australia for academic excellence and teaching innovation.
The College is initially implementing Lectopia into a couple of venues, whilst simultaneously encouraging the use of system's Self-Service Upload tool by teaching
staff, and expects to see the adoption of classroom capture at the school increase significantly over the next year or so.
The team is delighted to announce that the University of Western Sydney (UWS) has recently joined the Echo360 Lectopia community, becoming the eighteenth university to license the system in Australia.
Commencing with an initial deployment of 12 venues for semester two this year, UWS aims to expand to 46 venues prior to the start of semester one in 2009. The Lectopia implementation at UWS will support teaching and learning activities across six campuses and will be predominantly capturing audio with screen capture.
At the 2007 Carrick Awards ceremony held at Parliament House in Canberra on 27 November, Mike Fardon and Jo Williams of the Lectopia team were presented with a prestigious Carrick Program Award
from the Carrick Institute for Learning and Teaching in Higher Education. This award is in recognition of Lectopia's
support of student learning across the Australian university sector, including the University of Western Australia, where the system captures more than 2,400 lectures per month.
See the official press release.
The Lectopia team is very pleased to announce that the University of Queensland (UQ) has
installed Lectopia, becoming the twentieth university to license the system. Renowned for
its innovative approach to learning spaces and teaching technologies, UQ will initially be
implementing Lectopia into thirteen large lectures theatres and hope to extend this service
into many more venues over the coming months.
In licensing Lectopia, UQ has joined a thriving community in Australia: approximately 45% of
all Australian universities now use the Lectopia technology to capture and publish their lectures,
with an average number of 30 Lectopia-enabled lecture theatres at each university.
Read the official press release.
Lectopia has recently been installed at the University of Sydney, bringing the total number of Australian universities licensing Lectopia to sixteen.
Initially implementing the technology into ten venues, Sydney will commence recording lectures during semester two 2007.
The Lectopia team is pleased to announce that Griffith University (Brisbane, Australia) is the 15th university to license the Lectopia system in Australia. Griffith will commence with a small-scale implementation
of Lectopia at their Nathan and Logan campuses.
The Lectopia team is delighted to announce that Newcastle University in the UK has licensed the Lectopia lecture capture and publication system, and plan to commence use of the system in first semester 2007.
Located in North-East England, Newcastle is one of the UK's leading teaching and research universities and is a member of the Russell Group. With a reputation for delivering excellence and innovation in their approach to teaching and research, the University has an undergraduate population of over 14,000 and more than 4,000 students pursuing postgraduate qualifications.
One of the motivating forces behind licensing Lectopia was the need to support the aims of the Centre for Excellence in Healthcare Professional Education, a collaborative CETL that brings together five universities in the region (Newcastle, Durham, Sunderland, Northumbria and Teesside).
Newcastle University becomes the 17th member of the Lectopia Community.
The Lectopia team was delighted to receive the Product Category Award at the 2006 Western Australian Information Technology and Telecommunications Awards (WAITTA) Dinner held on 23 March. The award,
recognising excellence in an IT&T product developed by a Western Australian organisation, was received by Project Director Michael Fardon on behalf of the team.
There was strong competition from a diverse field in this category, with a total of four shortlisted products. It was Lectopia's first appearance at WAITTA,
rounding out a strong University of Western Australia presence overall, with other departments receiving nominations in numerous categories. Find out more about WAITTA.
RMIT University (Melbourne, Australia) has recently become the 14th Australian university to license the Lectopia system, bringing the total to 16 internationally. The system will initially
be rolled out into approximately 20 teaching spaces in Semester 1 2007, ready for production usage in Semester 2.
Jo Williams presented a paper at the ascilite 2006 conference held in Sydney between 3-6 December.
The theme for the conference was "Who's learning? Whose technology?". Jo's paper, entitled "The Lectopia service and students with disabilities", gave an overview of a 2006 analysis of
why and how students with disabilities or medical conditions are using Lectopia, the perceived benefits derived and the problems encountered.
Lectopia was also presented with an ascilite award at the event, received by Project Director Michael Fardon. The Lectopia team is delighted to have had the system and its achievements recognised in this way.
See the January-April 2007 newsletter for more information.
Jo Williams and Kate Goodwin from the UWA Lectopia team attended the EDUCAUSE 2006 conference held in Dallas during October. Invited to represent Lectopia on the
Apple Computers exhibition booth, and located next to the Sakai and Open Knowledge Initiative teams, it was a wonderful opportunity to showcase the Lectopia technology internationally.
See the January-April 2007 newsletter for more information.
Monash University will shortly become the fifteenth university to install Lectopia. The Victorian College of Pharmacy, based at the Parkville Campus, will be installing the latest version of Lectopia (3.4) in
six venues ready for the commencement of Semester 1 2007.
The Lectopia team is pleased to announce that La Trobe University (Melbourne, Australia) aim to install Lectopia during July. Commencing in Semester 2 2006, La Trobe intends to undertake a small-scale implementation of Lectopia
at the Melbourne (Bundoora) and Bendigo campuses, with a view to rollout of a production service in Semester 1 2007.
Lectopia is featured prominently in a recent article published by the Educause Learning Initiative. The article, "DukeCapture: Automated Classroom Lecture Recording", outlines the criteria identified by Duke
when selecting the product to meet their automated lecture recording needs, including:
- Demonstrates a record of reliability and effectiveness
- Provides an enterprise-wide solution
- Makes use of existing investments in classroom and campus technological infrastructure
- Is cost-effective in its implementation
- Provides faculty control over scheduling
- Allows students access to content from anywhere at any time
The full article is available from the Educause site at www.educause.edu/LibraryDetailPage/666?ID=ELI5011.
For more information about the DukeCapture service please visit www.oit.duke.edu/dms/dukecapture/index.html.
Duke University (North Carolina, USA) has officially announced that Lectopia will be moved into production service in Fall 2006. This marks an exciting step forward for Duke in
their implementation of Lectopia, as they move to identity additional venues on campus to build on their existing Lectopia-enabled venues used during their 'proof of concept' trial period in 2005.
More information regarding Duke's move to production service of Lectopia can be found at: www.duke.edu/ddi/projects/capture.html.
In November 2005 Swinburne University (with campuses based in both Australia and Malaysia) became the tenth Australian university to license Lectopia. Two Lectopia team members assisted
on-site for three days to install the system and facilitate the early stages of implementation.
Swinburne has plans to experiment with capturing any material written on a whiteboard, giving students all the necessary information they would normally receive in an actual lecture presentation. Over
the next three months eight lecture theatres will be set up to support Lectopia at Swinburne's Hawthorn, Lilydale and Prahran campuses, with plans to 'go live' with their Lectopia system for the start
of their first semester in 2006. Depending on further funding, the service will be expanded to all higher education lecture theatres and key TAFE teaching venues. The electronic whiteboard capability
will be part of this expansion.
Paul Meulenberg, Assistant Director, Learning and Teaching Support at Swinburne University of Technology, commented "For lecturers and teachers, the unobtrusive operation of Lectopia makes
it a highly appealing learning technology."
The iLecture System was showcased at the recent Association of Education Technology Managers (AETM) Annual Conference held at the University of Western Australia in November 2005. The conference was
attended by Audio Visual Systems Managers from both Australian and New Zealand Universities, all of whom were able to experience first hand the iLecture System in action as it captured all of the
presentations for the conference, which are now linked directly from the AETM website. The recordings are also a very good example of iLecture's video podcasting
capabilities.
View the 2005 AETM Conference recordings.
Mike Fardon presented a paper at the Educause 2005 annual conference in Orlando, Florida. The conference ran
between 18-21 October and its theme was "Transforming the Academy: Dreams and Reality". Mike's presentation, entitled "Distributed Learning Utilising On-Demand Internet-Transmitted Lectures: A Case
Study", offered an overview of the development and implementation process of the iLecture System, and considered issues surrounding how the system supports both lecturing staff and students in their
teaching and learning activities.
Version 3 of the iLecture System digitiser will be tested by the iLecture Development Group in selected venues at UWA during the final four weeks of semester two 2005, with the aim that this version
of the digitiser will be released to all iLecture licensees by the end of 2005. It features a greatly improved user interface, easier configuration and support for screen capture.
The Apple University Consortium (AUC) publish a biannual magazine called Wheels for the Mind which features articles
on ICT issues and research, Apple products and case studies on specific tools. For the Spring 2005 edition, David Braue published "iLecture: Putting Runs on the Board", looking at the recent
development and commercialisation activities of the iLecture team.
The twelfth annual international conference of the Association of Learning Technology took place between 6-8 September at the University of Manchester, UK. The theme for ALT-C 2005 was "Exploring the frontiers of e-learning Ð borders, outposts and migration". Jocasta Williams gave a presentation at the
conference entitled "On-Demand Internet-Transmitted Lecture Recordings: Attempting to Enhance and Support the Lecture Experience", based on a research paper co-authored by herself and Mike Fardon. The
presentation focused on the results from a recent iLecture System case study, considering questions relating to the development, role and effectiveness of iLecture, in particular reviewing the impact
that iLecture has had the student learning experience and meeting accessibility and flexibility priorities.
See Research to download a copy of the research paper or the PowerPoint presentation.
Due to the trademark restrictions preventing the use of the 'iLecture System' name in the USA, it has been necessary to find a new name for the iLecture System. After a period of consultation within
the iLecture team and the involvement of the UWA community, the name 'Lectopia' was chosen. Trademark applications for this name have been lodged in Australia and the USA, and another is planned for
submission in the United Kingdom.
With the increasing popularity of podcasting in the education sector as a means for distributing audio content to students, establishing podcasting as a feature of the iLecture System was essential.
iLecture Version 3.1 fully supports podcasting, providing lecturers with even more options in how they can make their lecturing content available to students, and students with increased flexibility
and mobility in how they study.
In mid-2005, the iLecture System technology was licensed by a further two Australian universities, the University of Tasmania (based in Hobart; installation in May) and the University of Newcastle
(based in Callaghan, just outside central Newcastle in New South Wales; installation in July). With the addition of these two universities to our client base, the iLecture System is now licensed by
over a quarter of all universities in Australia.
UWA's Centre for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning (CATL) publish CATL News on a quarterly basis. In the May 2005 edition, an article on the iLecture service at UWA written by Mike Fardon was
published which provided an overview of the system's history, student usage statistics, lecturer feedback, commercialisation activities, and planned developments. In summary, the article stated: "The
iLecture System has become an important part of the teaching and learning environment at UWA. This has occurred in the context of a University Operational Priority regarding flexible teaching and
learning, the emergence of regional and transnational delivery of programs, and an emphasis on inclusive teaching practices. Student demand has clearly shown that iLecture is servicing a need for many
students".
In April 2005 Deakin University (based in Victoria, Australia) became the seventh Australian university to license the iLecture System. Two iLecture team members were on site at Deakin for three days
during early April to install the system and oversee the early implementation stages with Deakin's Learning Services team. Deakin plans to 'go live' with their iLecture System for the start of their
second semester 2005.
The 2005 Educause Australasia conference was held in Auckland between 5-8 April. The conference attracted delegates from across the globe to present and listen to refreshing perspectives on current
issues and innovations in higher education. At the invitation of conference organisers, and with the equipment and support provided by Apple Computer Australia, the papers presented by keynote
speakers at the conference were recorded using iLecture technology. Martin Hill (Digital Media Specialist, Curtin University) provided tremendous technical support and was available to speak with
delegates about Curtin University's experience of the iLecture System. Curtin University was one of the first universities to license the iLecture System from UWA.
Registered delegates of
the conference have access to these recordings via the interactive section of the conference website.
Duke University (North Carolina, USA) is currently undertaking a 'Proof of Concept' trial of the iLecture System in a number of lecture theatres over a three-month period. In preparation for this,
two senior members of the iLecture management team were on site at Duke University for a week in January 2005 to assist with the installation and implementation of iLecture.
During the trial period, staff at Duke aim to overview the iLecture software functionality and the feasibility of its implementation on a large scale within their University. Assessing staff and
student responses to iLecture, addressing issues of integration with their existing learning management systems, and developing an understanding of the necessary administrative processes involved in
using iLecture are all important factors in this trial. The trial period is due to be completed at the end of their Spring Semester, 2005. More information regarding Duke's trial of the iLecture
System can be found at: www.duke.edu/ddi/capture.html.
The iLecture Development Group has released iLecture System v3.0 Update. This update includes a number of major features, particularly the Integration API and a new Authentication System. The iLecture
Application now offers a flexible authentication approach that is designed to integrate with existing authentication systems. The authentication system caters for public and authenticated content as
well as seamless login support for integrating with relating learning systems.
Mike Fardon presented the following session at the 2004 Ascilite Conference: "iLecture: An enterprise level system for
delivering Internet transmitted lectures"
The iLecture Development Group announced forthcoming support for the iLecture System to support direct capture of computer screen - referred to as 'VGA capture'. In early-mid 2005 an updated version
of the iLecture System is scheduled for release that will provide full support for capture and processing of this recording format. VGA recording will be trialed at UWA in first semester 2005.
The Australian Awards for University Teaching (AAUT) were established in 1997 by the Australian Commonwealth Government to celebrate and reward excellence in university teaching. Between 2000-2004,
this scheme was managed by the Australian Universities Teaching Committee (AUTC); the Carrick Institute is due to undertake management of the scheme from 2006. More information regarding the AAUT can
be found at: http://www.autc.gov.au/aaut.htm or http://www.carrickinstitute.edu.au/.
In 2002 the University of Western Australia was the recipient of one of an AAUT institutional award for its Innovative and Practical Approach to the Provision of Educational Services to the Local
and/or Regional Community, and the iLecture System played a significant part in the University's successful application.
See UWA Case Study Awards and
Testimonials for more information.
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