Overview

Central Wyoming College (CWC)’s nursing program is truly the frontier. Located in Riverton with a smaller campus 110 miles away in Jackson, it serves 15,000 square miles of mountain passes and sparsely populated rural areas. The program’s 40 participants live throughout the vast area and attend classes on both campuses. Many have families and full-time jobs. Add long commutes and unpredictable weather, and class attendance can be a problem.

Teachers had been recording lectures in several ways: videotapes, DVDs, and audio-visual conferencing of content from Riverton to Jackson. However, these were imperfect solutions. The biggest frustration for instructors was the lost teaching moments – those split seconds where a concept clicks. Something had to change.

The Nursing Program’s Needs

With the goals of growing the nursing program and addressing student commutes, the program’s leaders started investigating lecture capture technologies. Podcasting, the distribution of digital media files to MP3 players and personal computers, emerged as the solution of choice. They compiled a list of requirements:

• Students needed to be able to access the content from home or another computer.
• Material needed to be delivered quickly so professors could stick to their semester schedules.
• Technology needed to be easy and uncomplicated, as well as reliable, for teachers and students.
• Solution had to be cost-effective, with minimal future maintenance.
• Most importantly, whatever they chose could not interrupt classroom teaching.

Lecture Capture Implementation

CWC’s nursing program installed the EchoSystem at its two campuses in Riverton and Jackson in January 2007, and it immediately revolutionized the way teachers had been recording and distributing course content to their students. Now, the instructor just walks into the classroom, logs into the software and simply teaches. The EchoSystem automatically schedules the class, digitally records the teacher, captures visual aids from slides and whiteboards, and packages it together for student download directly to a computer or portable MP3 player.

Within 15 minutes of the session, students can access the lecture via existing campus course management tools such as Blackboard and WebCT, anytime of day or night. Students play it back on their iPods, home computers or as they drive in their cars; pausing, rewinding and fast-forwarding as they go. They choose to access the lecture in audio format or through enhanced podcasts, which display still graphics from the live class along with the audio.

Impressive Results

The Echo360 solution has had a huge impact on CWC’s nursing program. This new way of capturing and distributing lectures is faster, easier, and more cost-effective than previous methods. Also, podcasting data shows a significant improvement in student performance. Some unexpected benefits: cross-training and mentoring for teachers, as well as the ability to distribute knowledge uniformly to the whole college. And concerns about students skipping class in favor of the podcast proved to be unfounded. Survey results showed that podcasts are used as supplements and for later note-taking.

• Students increased performance on final exams by 6.5% compared to scores of students from the years before Echo360 podcasting was introduced.
• Students improved comprehension by listening to material during long commutes and throughout their day. In fact, 50% review podcasts for every lecture, and 70% listen to the entire lecture when they access a podcast.
• More than 90% of students feel that podcasts are beneficial to their learning experiences.
• The Echo360 technology is available for institution-wide learning needs, which has been valuable in addressing standard procedures for access to CWC’s online library, a requirement for program accreditation.