Scenario
The Faculty of Science runs a Master of Data Science (MDS) Programme, taught face-to-face and on campus. In the future, the Faculty is seeking to move this to online only delivery, broadening the potential reach of the programme. As a step towards this, two of the key modules from the programme, Introduction to Statistics for Data Scientists (ISDS) and Introduction to Mathematics for Data Scientists (IMDS) were selected for development of online content to replace face-to-face lectures, although students would still retain tutor contact time in computer practical workshops.
Solution
Working with the Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) in the two modules, the Science Digital Education team helped to plan, structure, record, edit, caption and release recorded lectures for the ISDS and IMDS modules. The timescale for the initial run in 2023 was tight, with the relevant academic staff needing to prioritise marking from the 2022/23 academic year before working on scripts for their 2023/24 content recordings. Recordings initially took place in the DCAD recording studio in the Teaching and Learning Centre building, but when that was closed for several months for refurbishment in the summer, the Science Digital Education team had hastily to secure a suitable room in the Maths and Computer Science (MCS) building, black out the windows and set up a temporary studio there instead.
Collaboration and Development Process
In the case of the IMDS module, tutor Professor Jeff Giansiracusa worked with Digital Learning Developer team to record using the Learning Glass. Recordings using the Learning Glass were edited post-production in Adobe Premiere Pro to produce recordings that were then uploaded to the Encore (Panopto) service ready for student viewing through Blackboard. The videos were captioned for accessibility and then released at the relevant times in Blackboard by the academic.
For the ISDS module, recordings were slightly more complex. Associate Professor Ric Crossman produced a script for each recording, along with some accompanying slides. Ric was filmed in the DCAD studio (and later in the temporary studio as well) in front of a green screen, which was then ultra-keyed in post-production to allow layering underneath the relevant slide content to illustrate the narrative. This lengthened the time required for the post-production editing process, but Ric’s on-screen presence and his creativity with the plots for some of the recordings led to some engaging output, including recordings featuring a competition to avoid winning a goat, an appearance in a fake casino, testing radioactive pellets in front of a nuclear reactor and slicing up jelly in a cookery programme format to illustrate linear regression.
Screenshots from an example ISDS Video
A series of screenshots from an example ISDS video filmed in front of the green screen, showing Ric and Paulina in front of the green screen and then with content layered underneath.
Recordings were made using an HD DSLR camera and a lapel mic feeding video and audio onto one of the team’s Macs. The content was then backed up to the cloud (SharePoint) to allow sharing among the SDE team members. Setup of the recording equipment and the associated lighting needed to be done in advance to ensure that the recording quality was at the highest level. This was made more complex by the shift from the DCAD Studio in the TLC to the temporary studio in the MCS building midway through the recordings. Post-production editing was done using either Adobe Premiere Pro or DaVinci Resolve, with DLD staff ultra-keying away the green screen and tucking Ric into a corner of the recording to allow the vast majority of the video background to be the associated slides, illustrating what was being taught. The completed draft videos were shared with the academic who then checked for errors. Agreed final versions were uploaded into the Encore (Panopto) service in the relevant folder for the module and then the Panopto auto-generated captions were edited to be accurate, and Tables of Contents were added to the recordings in Panopto.
Here’s an example video from the ISDS module:
Quick Tips for Creating Studio Recordings
- Ensure adequate planning time – One of the key takeaways from this project was the need to allocate sufficient academic staff time in advance. The DLD Team has created a document to help with workload allocation planning which will be used to inform future projects of this nature, to ensure that staff have adequate time to plan and record their sessions without leaving a late pressure on the DLD team to get all the recordings edited and ready in time for term.
- Script the recording in advance – Not everyone will want to record directly from a script, indeed recordings sound better when they are not just plainly read out from an autocue, but having a script or at least a firm layout to adhere to, even if it’s not followed verbatim, keeps the person being recorded on topic. This in turn also aids with post-production editing tasks.
- Test the equipment – A test run of a short recording before starting the actual recording proper is highly recommended to ensure video and audio are being captured fully and that the lighting setup is correct.
Revision for 2024/25
The recordings were all revisited for the 2024/25 academic year. First time around timescales had proved difficult on this project, as by the end of recording what represented Ric’s Week 4 videos for ISDS, it was apparent that there just wasn’t going to be enough time to record the remaining weeks of videos in the studio, edit them down afterwards and get them into the Blackboard module in time, so we worked with Ric to set him up in his office using PowerPoint’s Cameo recording feature to allow Ric to do almost the entire recording process himself, enabling much faster turnaround than in the studio.
The degree of compromise on the final quality of these Cameo-created videos was necessary at the time, but pleasingly all the recordings were revisited in the spring of 2024. Studio versions were made for all the remaining weeks not initially done for 2023/24 and these will be easier to keep up to date for future iterations of the module.
If you want to find out more, please contact us.