Journal of Academic Development and Education JADE Issue 11 Summer 2019 | Page 4

Editorial: On Lecture Capture and Footprints During a time of professional adjustment, it is customary to keep an eye on both the past and the future. It is normal to feel excited by and to worry about what is to come; and natural to reflect on what has brought you to this junction. Introduction Dr David Mathew Recently I took a deep breath, held my nose … and plunged into a new job in a new educational setting. I bid a fond adieu to Higher Education and accepted an offer to work inside the National Health Service. At my time of transition, the debate about lecture capture had mostly abated; but once upon a time the voices had been raised high and the debate had seemed splenetic. Furthermore, with academic tides being what they are, we might predict that the storm will reach our shores again someday soon. Learning and Development Manager NHS Arden & Greater East Midlands Commissioning Support Unit. Contact: [email protected] Dr David Mathew has worked in a wide variety of education settings since graduating from Bangor University in 1993. He started his career in education a year later when he moved to Egypt to The idea had been that by using a tool such as Panopto, a practitioner could record a voice and whatever was on the screen (often a Powerpoint presentation) into one tidy package that could be viewed by anyone enrolled on that module at a later date. So far, so good. A captured lecture could be used as a revision aid in the run-up to an assessment, perhaps; one colleague of mine knew that he would be absent for the better part of a semester while he convalesced after an operation, so he used Panopto to pre-record the semester’s lectures – including the activities – and timed their release to coincide with when he would have been physically present. teach O and A Level English. He worked in private language schools and an HR Department before beginning a chapter in Further Education, where he taught in community settings and a maximum security prison, and managed large teams of lecturers. He has always enjoyed working with healthcare professionals, and after working at the Royal College of Nursing and with healthcare teams at the University of Bedfordshire, he has By this point, additional arguments for the benefits of lecture capture are well rehearsed. Colleagues pro might speak of the opportunity lent to students to view a session that they might not have been able to attend, either because of illness, indisposition, work commitments or family matters. If the lecturer is confident enough to do so (and where appropriate permissions have been sought), he or she might arrange for cameras to enhance the finished package – by including the lecturer, for example, in the case of a session that involves the teaching of a dramatic passage, or of a medical procedure on a mannequin. moved into a management position, as a Learning and Development Manager for the NHS. 4 What, however, of the counter-arguments? Colleagues anti claimed that student attendance would plummet if students were given the chance to obtain what they needed by any means other