Celebrating 10 years of ReCap

The ReCap team were invited to  last week’s Celebrating Success Event in recognition of their fantastic work, in collaboration with staff across the University, over the past 10 years.

Newcastle University has now been involved in lecture and event capture since 2007/08 which was a number of years before the majority of UK HEIs even began to consider the potential benefits of such a service.  From the outset the team involved envisioned a pervasive institutional service that would enhance student experience by providing supportive learning resources for all students and especially those with disability, international students and those whose circumstances make attendance at all lectures problematic.

Since its introduction the use of the service has grown each year. In the first full year of use (2008/09) 1264 recordings were made across 18 venues and which were viewed 56,756 times. In 2016/17 the service made 33,204 recordings across 255 venues (located in Newcastle, London and Malaysia) which received 794,308 views.

The growth and success of the project is largely due to the deep ongoing collaboration between academic and professional services staff from across the University that has ensured clarity and consistency of vision and a service that integrates all necessary elements of IT to ensure a reliable and easy to use system for both staff and students.

As hoped the service is highly valued by students and close working with NUSU to gather student feedback has enabled us to understand how students use the service to enhance their learning and teaching:

“ReCap is one of the best resources the University has, it stops you from falling behind if you happen to miss a lecture for whatever reason or if you don’t grasp something in the lecture you can re-watch it.”

“I wouldn’t go to a university for my Masters course if ReCap was not available, it is extremely important for revision and helpful when you cannot get to a lecture.”

“ReCap reduces the pressure of note-taking in lectures and supports me to learn as well as other people. Before university there was no system like this so now I am surprising myself with how much better my grades are.”

(Quotes taken from 2016/17 NUSU ReCap Survey)

If you would like to find out more please contact LTDS@ncl.ac.uk 

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