Lecturecast offers more than just video playback. With the Lecturecast Engagement tools,  Tutors can set up interactive activities, to engage and support students, while learners can access Study Guides which consolidate their notes and queries.

While many of the features found within the Lecturecast platform can be realised in other ways, one of its main strength is to have a rich feature set integrated into one platform, this has a number of benefits:

Ease of use for students who can review and make synchronised notes against recordings and slide decks all in one place as well as access other features that may have been made available to them like interactive slides and recording transcripts.

From a teaching perspective the fact that student interactions are not spread across more platforms than necessary means student engagement is more easily tracked and common points of confusion are more easily recognised and remedied. Key engagement analytics for each section (module) are made available within Echo360 to all module teachers and it's worth noting that during periods of less face-to-face contact engagement information can be very useful.

By using the Lecturecast engagements tools, before, during or after the delivery of a lecture/recording,

Students are be able to:

• Flag confusing content;
• Bookmark slides they may want to revisit during their revision;
• Take notes – these are personal and only visible to the specific students. Students can later download these notes;
• Ask questions and engage in discussions;
• Respond to interactive question slides.

Staff are able to:

• Deliver presentations with interactive question slides making recorded or live sessions more engaging;
• View points in the lecture where students may have been confused;
• View questions raised and respond to these either during or after the lecture;
• Generate in class discussion while lecturing or after the lecture;
• After the lecture, view student engagement with lecture slides and recordings.

Ideas for teaching with Lecturecast engagement tools

Looking for ideas on how to encourage active learning using Lecturecast? see the Echo360 blog post  21 Ways to Teach with Echo360 – Encourage Active Learning in your Class

Beetham H. (2007) notes that students learn more effectively when they:

• are active;
• are motivated and engaged;
• can bring their existing capabilities into play;
• are appropriately challenged;
• have opportunities for dialogue;
• receive feedback;
• have opportunities for consolidation and integration.

Guides

• Lecturecast: creating and viewing interactive content
• Lecturecast analytics