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This paper evaluates the benefits and drawbacks of lecture recording, which aspects of lectures and lecture capture systems are most used, and what additional features and functions would make the experience more effective. We evaluated 4 computer science courses recorded during spring 2011 using our comprehensive lecture capture system PAOL and presented with webMANIC. We discuss the results of student surveys and focus groups and compare these with prior surveys that investigated how students reacted to the availability of online lecture content and how they used these resources in large-and small-scale deployments with both home-grown and commercial lecture capture technologies. The primary motivation for this study was to analyze how lecture capture fits in the context of computer science curricula and pedagogy and about how we can enhance our systems to be more educationally effective.

Scientific research has always relied on communication for gathering and providing access to data; for exchanging information; for holding discussions, meetings, and seminars; for collaborating with widely dispersed researchers; and for disseminating results. The pace and complexity of modern research, especially collaborations of researchers in different institutions, has dramatically increased scientists' communications needs. Scientists now need immediate access to data and information, to colleagues and collaborators, and to advanced computing and information services. Furthermore, to be really useful, communication facilities must be integrated with the scientist's normal day-to-day working environment. Scientists depend on computing and communications tools and are handicapped without them.

This paper describes our experiences with the first partial deployment of Presentations Automatically Organized from Lectures (PAOL), a lecture recording system developed and tested at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. PAOL automatically records all information presented during lectures using any combination of computer, whiteboard, and overhead presentation and compiles the captured lectures into indexed presentations. We discuss lessons learned from this deployment that have application in lecture recording specifically and classroom technology in general. We also discuss our initial evaluation of created presentations as determined by a small focus group study.