Lecture capture systems record the screen of your computer, and optionally, video of the presenter or perhaps a whiteboard, document camera, or lab experiment. The resulting recording is available to students via Canvas, a web page, email, or other means of distribution.

Lecture capture is most commonly used as the name implies: to record a lecture presented in a classroom for future reference by the students. It can also be used to record short lectures for online classes, record a short demonstration that has to be repeated regularly, record student speeches, or remotely proctor an exam.

Why capture lectures?

Using lecture capture has several benefits:

Students can review lecture materials until they are able to understand difficult concepts.
English language learners can hear the material again, stop, pause, check translations, and review.
Students who are out sick or dealing with job or family issues can catch up on class materials.
Many lecture captures offer closed captioning and automatically transcribe your recording for you (both Zoom Pro & Panopto offer these features).

Will my students use it?

If you are using lecture capture, keep in mind that many students don't have a clear understanding of how to be a successful college student (Conley, 2007), and may not know how to effectively use recorded lectures to learn, nor the importance of attending class. When using lecture capture, consider:

including information about appropriate ways to use the recordings in your syllabus.
spending time in the first week of classes discussing the importance of not using the recordings as a strategy to avoid attending class. Highlight the things students will miss by not being physically present.
discussing effective ways to use recordings. For instance, demonstrate how to skip ahead or search within a recording and how to take notes while watching.

Accessibility

Everything in a course needs to be accessible. This is required by federal and state law. This includes, but is not limited to, online content, Word docs, PDFs, Canvas course materials, and audio and video recordings. All audio and video recordings need to be closed captioned. There are many resources to assist in making contents accessible. See Accessibility Info for more information.

References

Conley, D. T. (2007). Redefining college readiness, Volume 3. Eugene, OR: Educational Policy Improvement Center.https://www.epiconline.org/publications/documents/RedefiningCollegeReadiness.pdf?force_download=true