Excellence Gateway
Published: 21 September 2009
This case study was produced by JISC RSC (Regional Support Centres) East Midlands on behalf of the Excellence Gateway.
Sector relevance: Further education and Sixth Form colleges
Keywords: Improving teaching and learning, improving institutional effectiveness, blended learning, planning and resources, management of resources, development of teaching and learning resources, curriculum good practice, learning resources centre, video resources, TV programmes
Northampton College has introduced a commercial system (ClickView) for recording and then digitally distributing TV programmes within the classroom. This has allowed greater integration of video into traditional teaching methods than was previously happening via DVD-based resources.
Northampton College has become one of the larger general further education colleges in the East Midlands region, with approximately 13,000 learners, a turnover of almost £28 million and over 600 full-time members of staff, and around 400 ‘visiting lecturers'.
It offers a broad range of full-time and part-time Learning and Skills Council (LSC) funded courses. In addition, it provides higher education courses funded through The University of Northampton; and support for other organisations including the voluntary sector.
The demand for using video in the classroom has risen in recent years as teaching staff use media-rich resources in new ways to support learning. The booking, management and supplying of DVD players and DVDs can be time-consuming for both the LRC (learning resource centre) team and teaching staff. The College was therefore keen to explore new ways of providing TV programmes for use in the classroom by moving from DVD-based resources to digital video.
After reviewing a number of products on the market, the College decided to introduce the ClickView system as a way of capturing TV programmes and making them available for staff to use in the classroom. This is a system that allows any Freeview channel to be recorded and captured on to the College server.
Costs include an initial payment for the original set-up and for the 24/7 recording system, which is a server box. There is an annual fee for maintenance and support. This includes the viewer software for which the College has a licence for 1,000 users.
The five terrestrial channels and BBC4 are automatically recorded and programmes are kept for two weeks. If no request to keep a programme is received during that time then the programme is deleted. If a request is received then the programme stays on the server and is added into the ClickView system.
Film from DVDs and other sources can also be added on to the ClickView system providing the appropriate copyright authorisation is in place. Existing video or DVD collections can also be placed on the network within the ClickView system if required.
LRC staff manage the system through ClickView Manager and deal with the requests for recording of different programmes from teaching staff.
Teaching staff use ClickView Player to search and play the TV programmes, allowing them to integrate video with traditional teaching methods in the classroom. Locating a relevant programme is easy, and is similar to any standard library catalogue search by subject or keyword.
Image 1: List of existing folders which can easily be added/deleted
Image 2: List of titles in a given subject folder, chapters and video details
Since its introduction in the summer of 2007, the College has found that the system has been well received by both staff in the LRC and teaching staff. Learners have benefitted from an increased use of video in the classroom.
Some usage statistics:
The benefits of this approach for Northampton College:
Masniza Sore, Learning Facilitator Co-ordinator at the College explains:
"ClickView 24/7 has allowed much easier access to relevant TV programmes across the whole College. It has opened up a new way of providing support for Curriculum and without doubt it has enriched the learning and teaching process.
"LRC staff have taken a new challenge with some initial reservations but, after the system was set-up by the IT team and tested, they started to appreciate and enjoy not only a much simpler way of recording but also editing and adding new programmes to the ClickView Library.
"Managing the audiovisual (AV) service has become less stressful – missing a programme is a thing of the past."
Feedback from Curriculum staff has been equally positive:
Claire Badcock, Lecturer in Catering:
"We are using the new system increasingly due to the availability, and also as it can offer a range of interesting and stimulating resources for the learners. It provides differentiation and helps to keep learners engaged. We use it within the classroom, but have also loaded some onto Moodle (our learning platform) for the learners to access themselves."
Sally Taylor, Lecturer in Childcare and Education:
"ClickView has been an excellent resource – much better than TV/DVD players – in particular because we are able to use it on a larger screen. I always use a gapped handout with any ClickView as I find this helps learners to concentrate and pick out the relevant information that I want them to gain."
Tony Jewson, e-Learning Manager and Physics Lecturer:
"The benefits of ClickView for the College have been many and varied. It has allowed different curriculum areas to share video resources without the danger of one "going astray" and of course for the same video to be used by more than one class at the same time.
"Staff have benefitted from the chaptering facility, which makes it easy to locate the section of a video required for a particular class and the ease of access without need of booking a TV/video and with the 24/7 box staff can even request recordings after the programme has been broadcast. The only real downside of the system has been the money needed to be set aside to cover the extra copyright fees required to digitise some videos."
The new method of capturing TV programmes has raised several points for consideration:
The College hopes to be able to overcome as many of these issues as possible in the near future to make its system for capturing and viewing TV programmes more efficient for all staff and learners. For example, the College is considering giving access to all programmes to students via the College network.
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