The University of South Florida and Northeastern University are going the extra mile to provide classroom lecture content for their student-athletes. Institutions like these have seen how multimedia can improve a student-athlete’s classroom experience. The past two semesters, Northeastern piloted lecture-capture options for students who need to miss classes due to game commitments. In the Spring of 2009, we used Flip cameras and Blackboard to deliver recorded lectures to the athletes. Because the Flip camera operation is not really scalable, we expanded the offering in the Fall of 2009 using an automated system—Tegrity—with some programs continuing to use the Flip cameras.
Universities derive a lot of pleasure from their sports. The time commitments of their athletes are significant. Besides football, baseball, basketball, and hockey, there’s track, swimming, crew and other sports which have serious time commitments associated with them and in most cases with very little scholarship money. When I was a student-athlete playing both football and baseball, the technology was not available to record the lectures and make them available for review.
Last spring, one athlete had to miss several classes in an upper level business course; he utilized the recorded lectures and earned a high A. This fall, it’s my understanding we had a high rate of retention from our student-athletes. Because the lectures were available to them, they didn’t have to drop the class because they got behind.
I’m not one that believes technology will solve all of our pedagogical woes, but in this case, effectively using tools (Blackboard, lecture capture software, and podcasting), without requiring the instructor to change much in the classroom, is a good service. In fact, these same tools can assist all students—providing them with an effective and efficient way to review lectures. Kudos to both Northeastern and South Florida!