Lecture Capture FAQs for SLU Faculty

You do. As with all course materials you create for a class, the recorded lecture belongs to you. See the Intellectual Property section of the Faculty Manual for a statement of the policy.

By default, captured/recorded content is only available to students enrolled in the course where the content is available. Instructors can elect to extend access as appropriate. If the instructor chooses to make the captures for a course available in different downloadable formats, the content could then be shared with other users as well. Other access that is consistent with your department or college policies may apply.

You (as instructor), not the University, make recorded lectures available to your students (and perhaps others). The University will not distribute your content to anyone else.

In general, faculty decide when and how to record lectures, based on their own preferences, course goals, etc. In some cases a department or program may require the use of lecture capture (e.g., large, multi-section courses with standardized curricula). Such decisions are made at the unit level. If you think you may be required to use lecture capture, check with your department chair or program director. You also may want to talk with someone in the Reinert Center or consult these Tips for Teaching with Lecture Capture.

The default recording format for Panopto at SLU is MP4, which can be streamed or downloaded, depending on your settings. If you choose, you may make lectures downloadable as videos or MP3s, which are audio only. This would give students the ability to download your lectures and listen to them on their smart phones or media players. Making files downloadable gives students the most flexibility for accessing and reviewing them. However, this option also means instructors cannot control who can view or access them later, since students would have the ability to repost those files (even inadvertently) or share them elsewhere. Note: if you opt to make files downloadable, you must ensure that the files do not contain protected material, such as copyrighted images, audio files, etc.; see above for more information on copyrighted considerations for lecture capture.

It means they will only be able to access the recordings with a web browser by accessing Canvas or by logging directly into Panopto. They will not be able to download recordings to other audio/media devices. For instructors who wish to control access to recorded lectures -- or who include copyrighted images, etc. in their lecture slides -- this option is the best way to ensure that students cannot repost or otherwise share the recordings.

Students often do prefer to have downloadable files, and this is perfectly fine, provided that you are comfortable sharing the materials in this way. However, if your recorded lectures contain copyrighted or other protected material, files should not be made available for downloading without permission. Without permission, faculty should only select the streaming file format (Panopto’s default setting).

Consistent with the University’s Panopto Video Retention and Storage Management Process, ITS will initiate a process each spring to identify videos for deletion. Videos that have not been viewed in at least 24 months and were created more than 12 months ago are marked for deletion. Instructors may move videos to the Panopto Archive for longer-term storage. ITS will send communications about the upcoming cleanup process each spring.

Panopto videos that have not been viewed in at least 24 months, and were created more than 12 months prior, will be marked for deletion on an annual basis (usually in the spring). ITS will send communications prior to the annual cleanup process. Instructors who wish to retain videos on a long-term basis should move them to the Panopto Archive.

Yes. Panopto is built specifically to accommodate the future reuse of course lecture materials, and this is one of the many virtues of lecture capture. However, there are many pedagogical considerations, as well as some student privacy considerations. Pedagogically speaking, simply reusing the same lectures over and over might not be possible, particularly if incidental student comments and questions are captured, as they may not be appropriate for future course contexts. For student privacy considerations, lectures that are captured live and include student presentations, small group discussions, and/or seminar classes, need student consent (consent form). Faculty members are not required to obtain student consent when rebroadcasting their own image and content, or when incidental or no student participation is recorded during a lecture.

Yes, but you may need student consent to do so. The same privacy considerations that apply in a brick-and mortar classroom, particularly to student work, apply to lecture capture broadcasts. If Panopto is used to disseminate student presentations, small group discussions, or seminar classes in a course in a future semester, faculty members will be responsible for obtaining student consent prior to distribution (consent form). Faculty members are not required to obtain student consent when broadcasting their own image and content, or when incidental or no student participation is recorded during a lecture and when the broadcast is directed to a defined course.

How you use Panopto is largely a matter of pedagogical goals, so this decision should be made with teaching goals / learning outcomes in mind. However, there are also questions of student privacy that must be considered. Whenever you plan to record live classes, you should be sure that students know the recording will be occurring. There are several ways to make this apparent, such as: announcing in class that you are turning on the recorder, and that students can request at any time to have it turned off, should the lecture or discussion involve sensitive topics; including a statement on your syllabus that in-class recordings may be made, so that students are aware of this from the beginning of the semester. (A recommended syllabus statement can be found below.)

Occasionally, before or after class, students may share information of a confidential nature with you while the Panopto recorder is still running. If this happens, you should remove that section of the recording, using the editing tools available within Panopto, before making the recording available to your students.

The research varies on this question. In general, it has historically shown that there is little noticeable negative impact on students' class attendance. Despite a common assumption among instructors that students will stop coming to class if they have access to a recorded lecture, research consistently has indicated that access to recorded lectures generally does not lead to students skipping classes (Petherbridge, 2010; Zhu, Bergom, 2010). However, much depends on how you have designed the class, what mechanisms of accountability have been built in, how you use class time, and numerous other things. To talk with someone about effective ways to incorporate lecture capture into teaching, reach out to the Reinert Center.

It varies and depends on a variety of factors. Most of the research studies are set up to observe the real and perceived usefulness of lecture capture systems and, therefore, focus information gathering on the students who actually use the systems, not the ones who opt not to do so. However, much depends on how you incorporate recorded lectures into your course design. To talk with someone about effective ways to incorporate lecture capture into teaching, reach out to the Reinert Center.

If you were going to use Panopto for this purpose, students would obviously need to be told in advance, and recording equipment would need to be positioned in such a way as to record all your students. This may not be possible and/or you may not be in a position to fully document all students’ participation. If you are able to use Panopto in this way, recordings should not be made available to other students in future semesters without student consent.

The following offers sample language you might import directly into your syllabus:

“Lectures/lessons may be recorded and made available to students registered for this class using the Panopto lecture capture system. Use of Panopto is intended to supplement the classroom experience. Duplication or redistribution of lecture capture recordings is prohibited without instructor consent. For technical assistance and for compliance issues (such as copyright and privacy considerations), please see the lecture capture guidelines available at https://slu.edu/provost/faculty-affairs/teaching-resources-for-faculty/lecture-capture/index.php.”