New technology means introducing new ways to help students review class material in an easier, more accessible way.

Creighton University began installing BlueCast, a system designed to record lectures, in several classrooms last spring. At the beginning of this semester, 45 classrooms had been equipped with the program. BlueCast recordings include audio, video and any type of computer aid used during the lecture.

Rick Murch-Shafer is the lead manager and instructional designer on the BlueCast project.

“We think the limited rollout of BlueCast has been very successful so far,” Murch-Shafer said. “The School of Medicine, [School] of Nursing, [College] of Business, biology and chemistry departments have all made tremendous use of the system. During the fall semester over 2,200 students were enrolled in classes that recorded at least 10 lectures during the term.”

Murch-Shafer has also gotten feedback on how students have responded to the program, and has gotten positive results.

“The students we have heard from seemed to really like the system and having lectures available for review,” Murch-Shafer said.

Dexter Turner, an Arts & Sciences freshman, said he found BlueCast helpful when he took Dr. Jay Leighter’s speech class.

“I used it a few times to review my speeches,” Turner said. “It helps you see what you need to improve on, like eye contact, volume control and movements that you don’t really think about when you’re giving a speech.”

Students have also let Murch-Shafer know that BlueCast has influenced their grades in a positive way after using it to review lectures and other materials. Not only have students benefitted from the BlueCast systems, but many of the professors have used BlueCast to improve their teaching methods.

“I’ve heard from some professors that they have used the recordings to self-evaluate how well they covered a particular topic in class, and also as a tool that they can refer students to who are struggling,” Murch-Shafer said. “Many of the instructors in the biology department were previously using hand-held recorders so they could post audio of their lectures online.

“BlueCast has made this process much simpler and less time-consuming for them to do this and provided more in terms of capturing the computer screen and video of the professor for playback.”

Colette O’Meara-McKinney, the associate vice president of Academic and eLearning Technologies, is working on including more classrooms and allowing more courses to use BlueCast.

“Choosing to use BlueCast will fall to individual instructors at this point,” McKinney said. “It is a resource to enhance student learning, but adoption is driven by the faculty. I will be reaching out to various faculty groups this spring semester and provide faculty development and training so a well-informed decision about inclusion in fall courses can be made.”

However helpful BlueCast has been so far, Murch-Shafer said that they are still looking for ways to improve the system.

“Over the holiday break we did have an upgrade in the integration with BlueLine,” Murch-Shafer said. “Previously, to watch the recordings students would need to go to the BlueCast website, log in and then find the recordings.

“Now the system makes links to the recordings available directly within the course on BlueLine and students can access them with a single click. Our goal is to have BlueCast operating at an efficiency such that the recordings are available within 24 hours of class.”