Flu-Proofing Your Course: Lecture Sessions

If you have a significant number of students absent from class or if you have suspected flu symptoms and are unable to hold a class session, there are options available at NC State University to deliver your lecture session online.

Elluminate Live! is a synchronous online collaboration tool that allows you to stream a live audio or video session with your students, as well as share your desktop, web pages and PowerPoint presentations.  Elluminate also includes chat and polling tools for real-time interactions with students. Elluminate is available for all NC State faculty to use, and sessions can be recorded for viewing later.

You may also consider publicly available, free tools (e.g., Dimdim, Palbee, Vyew) that you can use to set up an ad-hoc collaboration session with a webcam on your computer.  Dimdim offers a free webinar service, Palbee provides free video meetings and recordings, and Vyew is a platform for live collaboration and webconferencing.

Use Rich Media to pre-record or capture lectures that students can watch in real-time or later through a web browser. You can reserve time in the DELTA MediaSite Studio to record a video of your lecture, complete with computer presentation. If you can’t get to campus, or need to make your accommodations at home, another option is to use LecShare Pro. LecShare Pro allows you to record voice narration over your PowerPoint slides, and package it as a QuickTime video for your students’ viewing. By adding what you say to the slide notes, you can produce a captioned video that all of your students can use, regardless of environmental limitations. See this earlier post for more information about getting LecShare Pro. A third tool you could use to record your lecture presentation is Camtasia Studio. This software allows you to perform a screen capture of material on your computer, as well as record narration over it. There are many Camtasia tutorials available.

As an alternative to broadcasting or recording lectures if you or numerous students are unable to come to class, substitute other types of activities for lecture, such as assigning additional readings or viewing topically-relevant online media that covers the same course content. Contact the NCSU Libraries and set up a course reserve (e-reserve page) that contains a list of additional readings that your students can access virtually.

For support in learning about and setting up any of these tools to support your class, please contact DELTA’s LearnTech service at learntech@ncsu.edu or call 919.513.7094; or request a consultation using our online request form.

A special thanks to our colleagues at Duke University, who created much of this material and then gave us permission to modify it for our campus.