Category Archives: Listen Again

Recording when Using Presenter View in PowerPoint in Lecture Theatres

Camtasia Relay, Listen Again, ,

This is a follow up posting to the Using Presenter View in PowerPoint in Lecture Theatres posting made yesterday. This one explains how to ensure that when you are recording a lecture and you have Presenter View in PowerPoint switched on that you record the main screen version (where your actual presentation is being shown full screen) rather than the Presenter View on the presenter’s PC on the desk (which would include all the slide notes).

The trick is to start the Presentation Show in PowerPoint first, before you start the recording in Camtasia Relay. If the Show is running then Relay will allow you to choose which ‘screen’ you want to record, the Presenter View one (which you probably don’t want to record) or the main screen version that is being shown on the projected screen to the students (this being the one you probably do want to record). This video shows you how to do this and also explains a trick about switching between applications using Alt + Tab to bring Relay back to the front to start the recording after the PowerPoint Show has been started.

Microsoft Lync – Guides Available

Camtasia Relay, Camtasia Studio, Collaborate, Documentation, Listen Again, Lync, Succeed, , , , , ,

Staff at the University of Stirling can install and make use of the peer-to-peer communication tool Microsoft Lync. Lync allows communication by audio, video and instant messaging, as well as the recording of sessions and distribution and sharing of content such as PowerPoint presentations. Users familiar with Skype or Blackboard Collaborate may wish to try out Lync to test how it compares for meetings and teaching and learning purposes. Lync is also fully integrated with Outlook, allowing meetings to be scheduled and placed in your work calendar, with invitations sent out by email.

A couple of guides to using this software have recently been created and are housed on a new Microsoft Lync page on the Information Services (IS) web site:

http://www.stir.ac.uk/is/staff/it/software/microsoftlync/

The guides are:

  • Using Microsoft Lync – An Introductory Guide
    This guide is aimed at staff wishing to run basic Microsoft Lync sessions, dealing with installing and setting up the software and how to connect to other staff and communicate with them.
  • Recording in Microsoft Lync
    This guide explains how to record sessions in Microsoft Lync, where the recordings are stored, how to change the location of stored recordings and how to process them through Camtasia Studio and Camtasia Relay in order to add them to a Listen Again page.

Further guides on using Lync are in the pipeline, including a guide on how to make use of the presentation features within the product. Watch this space.

Listen Again Upgraded

Listen Again

In a previous posting we noted that Listen Again server should be upgraded. The upgrade has been in place since the start of semester and has led to huge improvement in processing for recordings. It still takes the same time to process each recording but as three can be processed in parallel the overall time between submission and receiving the email that the job has been completed has returned to the previous time of less then 24 hours (and usually considerably less than this).

Listen Again Upgrade

Listen Again, Video

The number of CPU cores available to process Listen Again recording is controlled by the licence purchased from TechSmith and we currently hold a 1-core licence. For next semester this should be upgraded to a 3-core licence — this does not change the time the server takes to deal with each individual recording but it does mean it can process 3 in parallel, effectively tripling performance.

The upgrade will mean that recordings are processed within 24 hrs unlike this semester when some recordings were taking almost 48hrs to get processed (unless there is huge increased in the number of recordings but evidence from previous years indicates only a modest uplift from autumn to spring semesters)

This change has no effect on how the software is used from teaching spaces/desktops.

Listen Again

Listen Again

The use of Listen Again has increased again this semester and a consequence of the extra usage is that it is taking much longer to process captures.
Previously it was taking less than 24 hours to process all the input to Listen Again whereas the current figure is around 30 hours. So a recording submitted on Tuesday at 18.00 will be processed around 24.00 on Wednesday. This means that emails from the system that announce that recordings are ready are taking a little longer than has been the norm. If students are asking when recording will be available it is probably wise to say within 48 hours if you plan to add the recording to the Listen Again page as soon as you get the email. If you are ‘saving them up’ for some form of timed release around examinations and/or assignments then there should be no difference.

Teaching Bites II

Assessment, Copyright, Listen Again, Plagiarism, Succeed, Teaching Bites, Turnitin

The next set of teaching bites are detailed below. They will all be in S10.

To sign-up go into Succeed and then to Learning & Development – My Learning, IT & Information Skills, Succeed Training. Also don’t forget to bring along your sandwiches!

These sessions will be available to remote campuses. To register for remote access please email Simon Booth.

2nd April: 12.00-13.00: Discussion Tool, Blogs and Wikis

This session will look at some of the collaboration tools within blackboard, these tools can be used to help build a sense of community in modules, can be used for group working, social interaction and the exchange of ideas.  The session will look at the discussion tool, blogs and wikis and give examples of where these might be used successfully within your succeed module.

9th April: 12.00-13.00: Turnitin

Turnitin offers much more than plagiarism detection. It has tools to facilitate peer marking (see Teaching Bites 23-April) and online marking (‘GradeMark’). This talk will demonstrate how to use GradeMark and discuss the positive and negative features of marking online.

 16th April: 12.00-13.00: Video (Listen Again, Lecture Capture, Screen casting)

This session will look at the tools available to allow you to incorporate video into your teaching at the University. These will include the Listen Again lecture recording service, producing video and audio podcasts, incorporating You Tube material into Succeed, using the ‘video everywhere’ tool  in Succeed, and recording and using material from TV and films.

23rd April: 12.00-13.00: Peer Marking

This session will  evaluate the use of an on-line peer/self-review tool (‘PeerMark’) available through the Turnitin.  Peermark distributes students’ work automatically,  allows the tutor to set feedback questions and word limits, and enables students to review each other’s work anonymously. Through  consideration of a recent case study, the preparation required for peer review, and the benefits and challenges will be reviewed. The session will demonstrate how to get started and some tips on its use.

 30th April: 12.00-13.00: Mind Genius – cancelled

This session will look at the software ‘Mind Genius. Mind Genius is mind mapping software that helps you capture, visualize and manage your ideas and information.  Mind Genius can be a useful tool for:

  •  Preparing  and planning essays and reports
  • Preparing presentations
  • Managing tasks
  • Brainstorm for innovation and generating new ideas
  • Plan strategies, projects, events, tasks & workload
  • Rapidly gather project requirements, risks, constraints & dependencies
  • Capturing the conversation and actions during meetings

 7th May: EDUFair (The University of Stirling’s annual learning and teaching conference)

14th May: 12.00-13.00: Resource lists – smarter working with your reading list!

The Aspire resource lists are dynamic so they tell the students where in the library a book is located.  Worried that the students are not reading key papers? Check the stats using the Aspire Dashboard feature.

21st May: 12.00-13.00: Copyright

Fundamentals of copyright for teaching and learning. In this teaching bites session we’ll help you to comply with UK copyright and point you towards the things the library can do to help.

eLearning Forum – Listen Again

e-Learning Forum, Electronic Marking, Listen Again, Plagiarism, Succeed, , , ,

Some presentations from the eLearning Forum on 23rd January 2014 are now available on the following Listen Again page:

http://listenagain.stir.ac.uk/media/2013/elearningforum/listenagain.php

This link and all the PDF versions of the presentations from the day are now also available in the ‘Learning and Development – My Learning’ course area in Succeed. You can find them all in the following folder:

> Course Content > IT & Information Skills > eLearning Forum > eLearning Forum Event – 23rd January 2014

eLearning Forum Presentations, Plagiarism Quiz and Turnitin Question

e-Learning Forum, Electronic Marking, Listen Again, Plagiarism, Succeed, Turnitin, , , , ,

This blog posting follows up from the eLearning Forum on Thursday, 23rd January 2014.

Presentations

These are now available to view in PDF format:

Plagiarism Quiz

The Plagiarism Quiz which Sarah Grayston has created is now available to view in the ‘My Learning’ course space in Succeed, to which all staff have access. You will find it in the ‘Assessments’ area of this course. If anyone would like a copy of this assessment added to their own module in Succeed then please contact Sarah sarah.grayston@stir.ac.uk to arrange this.

Turnitin Question

To clarify after the discussion relating to Turnitin: if the settings of a Turnitin Assignment are such that a student paper is not submitted to the repository, then Turnitin will still compare the submitted paper against student papers, web and electronic journal items in its database and generate an Originality Report. The only difference will be that Turnitin will not compare papers submitted under this assignment with other papers submitted to this same assignment. Therefore, plagiarism taking place within the module (one student copying off another) would not be spotted as the papers would not be in the repository.

Listen Again

Where staff have agreed to share their talks, we are working on making the presentations from the session available on the Listen Again service. We hope to have these ready for early next week and will do a further blog posting when they are available.

Camtasia Studio 7 Video Help Guides

Camtasia Studio, Listen Again,

For those of you who use Camtasia Studio to make and edit recordings (which you may then add to a Listen Again page), you may be interested to know that there is a range of video help tutorials on the TechSmith web site. These explain how to perform a whole series of tasks in Camtasia Studio; including editing the unwanted video and audio from your clip, adding Title Clips at various points in the recording and zooming and panning between areas of the recording. All these features will help enhance your presentations when users view your recordings later. The help videos for Camtasia Studio version 7 (the version available on campus) are here:
http://www.techsmith.com/tutorial-camtasia-7.html

For those of you who are interested the next version, Camtasia Studio 8, is available for a free trial download from the TechSmith web site. It includes a few new, enhanced features which you may make use of in the the trial period. Version 7 is the licensed version on campus, however, so when your free trial with version 8 runs out you’ll be back to using version 7 for now.

Making Off Campus Lecture Recordings

Listen Again, ,

As well as being used for general lecture capture in the teaching spaces on campus, Camtasia Relay may also be used to capture recordings made off campus. This can be done via something called the Camtasia Relay Portable Recorder. This application can be downloaded to a USB stick and allows recordings to be made on computers not connected to the University network (at home, for example). Then the USB can be brought onto campus and the presentation can be uploaded to the Camtasia Relay server and added to the relevant Listen Again page in the usual way. Full details of this service are available in this guide on the IS web site:
http://www.stir.ac.uk/media/schools/is/documents/succeeddocuments/relay_portable_recorder.pdf