I am just out of a meeting where we planned a half day lecture training session and the discussion around lecture capture came up. As a learner, a student, I would have loved lecture capture and when contemplating why it constitutes such a problem to me two issues were emerging:
The issue of permanence
When we are teaching, we are meeting our students at a junction in time and space within the educational landscape. This transient point is to some degree a safe space for us teachers. We are building rapport with our students, we meet in this enclosed temporary space that is ours to shape, to engage with, to act within. And once the hour is up we leave this space, and we leave this space behind. The place within which we acted and with which we interacted morphs and creates new possibilities for other learners and lecturers.
If we then introduce lecture capture into this space, we are adding not just another dimension but we are adding permanence. The transient nature, the flux, is suddenly given limits, is given Gestalt (probably as MPEG or avi) it is given a permanent place to exist within and our teaching ceases to be a dialogue and becomes an object. With everything that is related to object biography, management, permanence, and scope for further and more sustained interrogation.
Another actor
My colleague and partner in crime (remember our model) Dr Vicki Dale calls technology another actor. So with lecture capture we are introducing another actor into our teaching and learning space. An actor who inhibits to some degree the interactive nature of our conversations. This actor is not an active participant, but an observer. An observer who introduces bias in our transient space and the potential for yet unknown judgement. Without the ability to respond.
There is more to it and I need to think about this in more detail but initially to me that shift from transient to permanent space seemed a significant inhibitor.
Adventures in Academic Development 