CHSS Online Teaching Initiative

Recording Lectures & Presentations

Recording lectures is a tedious but useful task. Although it is easy to refer students to handouts with essential information, such handouts may not be an adequate substitute for a lively and engaging presentation that includes remarks and commentary. Prerecorded presentations will help engage students with course materials through the summation of essential points, cases and examples, colorful pictures and/or video clips, and explanations offered through charts and other types of information graphics. Lectures and short talks available through professional organizations, other institutions of higher education, and the library can also be linked to the course.

In order to create a prerecorded presentation, first prepare a script of the lecture with accompanying visual aids. Then choose a program to record the talk. The presentation does not have to be longer than ten minutes. Be mindful of the file size and break down longer presentations for an easy download.

Lectures can be recorded using many different tools. A simple PowerPoint presentation with narration can be a great starting point. You can convert it to an MP4 file (See instructions on p. 11.) and then upload it to Panopto, a system that will store your recordings.

There are several options when it comes to choosing the program for recording lectures. The choice of the program will depend on the type of information delivered in the lecture and the tools required to make all the points in the lecture. Depending on the size and number of presentation files, consider posting them to a private YouTube site and posting the link to the online class.