One interesting item of note, during our analysis of our opt-out rates for lecture capture we have noticed that the institutional average hides a much more complex picture. Although the average is 11.7% the minimum school level opt-out is as low as 0% and as high as 32%. Another trend seems to be STEM vs non-STEM subject areas. Both of our STEM faculties (Science & Engineering and Biology, Medicine & Health) have opt-out rates well below the institutional average. Within the STEM group the highest opt-out rate is almost half the institutional average. Conversely, all five Humanities schools have opt-out rates above the University average and in some cases, well above the University average.

We do not currently gather the reason why an individual chooses to opt-out. It is likely we will attempt to survey staff who opt-out, however this may present some difficulties. Approximately 250 academics opt-out each year and anecdotally, a typical response rate to a voluntary survey will be between 10-15%. This would translate to 25 to 37 responses and this may not be enough data to obtain a clear picture.

November 2018

Stuart Phillipson

 

Hello,

Apologies if you are a member of staff that has received multiple opt-out emails this week. There are several reasons that we send opt-out emails more than once, such as detecting significant changes in the timetabling of a course, however this week there was a specific cause that lead to more email traffic than normal. In order to select recordings to be made for students registered with The Disability Advisory Support Service (DASS), we connect to an application that helps us to calculate which courses DASS students are enrolled on, without the podcasting service knowing specifically who these students are. Recently some updates to this application changed a bunch of variables that made it appear as if a large number of DASS students had left the enrolment of many courses. Fortunately this has now been fixed, how ever we still need to notify staff by email if their courses are now flagged to be recorded for DASS students. This means one last round of sending emails and then you should here from the Podcasting Service only if there are significant changes to your course in future.

Best Regards

Stuart Phillipson

Media Technologies Team Lead