| | October 20178In My OpinionIn recent years, digital technologies that allow instructors to livestream and/or record their lectures and make them accessible to students on demand have become vital to the effective delivery of lessons. The simple fact is that life has a way of intervening and students can benefit from the opportunity to attend classes remotely, or to see and hear lectures at a more conducive time. Oftentimes, higher-education institutions tout the use of these cutting-edge technologies, but only make them accessible to certain segments of the student population, or in certain classrooms or meeting spaces.However, it's been more than a decade since Rutgers University­Camden and Rutgers Law School began utilizing such media that are now available in every classroom and meeting space on campus­and we've managed to do it at a fraction of the cost of widespread, commercial systems.So how did we get here?At Rutgers, we have always believed that the time, energy, and money that students invest in their educations is invaluable. Consequently, when students have been forced to miss classes for legitimate reasons, we have realized the importance of bringing the classes to them.The process sounds rather archaic today ­ and indeed it was­but we began by paying freelance videographers to sit in the back of classes with video cameras and record the lectures. But the work was tedious and time-consuming; the videos still had to be edited, processed, and sent to the students. As you can imagine, that didn't always happen in a timely fashion; often students didn't get the chance to view the content before the next class took place.So we set out to minimize the delay and improve the production quality, beginning with Rutgers Law School in 2006. With an initial budget of $10,000­an unheard of amount in today's technological landscape­we hardwired cameras in every classroom. This setup naturally increased the production quality, offering a high-definition picture and superior audio; no longer was the microphone located in the back of the classroom, picking up every ambient keyboard stroke, paper shuffle, and cough.We also custom-wrote the software­we called it CAMS (Completely Automated Media System)­which had the capability of recording the class, converting the video, uploading it online, and emailing students to notify them that it was available. In addition to the class time, which was usually about three hours long, it only took the system about two hours to process the video Digitization to Modernize Higher Education By Tom Ryan, Director of IT, Rutgers University­CamdenTom Ryan
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