Echo360 Pushes ‘Lecture Capture’ Tech into Classrooms from Qatar to the U.S.
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Echo360 Pushes ‘Lecture Capture’ Tech into Classrooms
Echo360's chief executive Fred Singer says its technology gives teachers "choices on how to use their time more efficiently." Photograph: Echo360 via Bloomberg
Echo360's chief executive Fred Singer says its technology gives teachers "choices on how to use their time more efficiently." Photograph: Echo360 via Bloomberg
Two hundred students from all over the Arab world take pharmacology classes in English at Qatar University, even though it's a second language for most. To help them understand the complex material, Dr. Peter Jewesson, a professor and dean of the College of Pharmacy, equipped five classrooms with technology to record lectures and sync them with other materials, such as professors' PowerPoint slides and notes on electronic whiteboards. The approach, known as lecture capture, lets students watch lessons remotely on their computers or return to study archived lectures after class.
Colleges have long been taping lectures, but in the last half-decade, an industry has emerged to sell specialized technology that captures many elements of a lesson to help students learn outside the classroom. Some see it as a way to teach people who have different learning styles, by letting those who have trouble understanding or paying attention return to the material at their own pace. Echo360, the Dulles (Va.) company that equipped Qatar University's pharmacology classrooms, has about 500 college clients in 29 countries, including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University and New York University.
Roughly 10 companies make lecture capture technology, including Cisco, Polycom, Qumu, Sonic Foundry and VBrick. Some companies also target the corporate training market in addition to or instead of academics. Echo360 distinguishes itself "because it offers the capture hardware and also software for desktops,” says Aimee M. Roberts, an analyst at business research and consulting firm Frost & Sullivan, “and is the only pure play in the education market that does both.”
Here's how it works. Echo360 installs a special piece of hardware in the back of a classroom that acts as a hub to receive feeds from classroom video cameras, electronic whiteboards and the lecturer's computer. Students can then watch all the elements of a live lecture online, or they can bookmark sections during class and review them later. The pharmacology students at Qatar University embraced the technology. “Because English is the language of choice in academia and health-care delivery but a second language for our students, we needed tools to help them overcome this challenge,” Jewesson says.
Schools spent $60 million to $70 million on lecture capture in 2011, Roberts estimates. While much of that is in North America, schools in Europe and the Middle East appear to be buying lecture capture systems the fastest, followed by Asia and Latin America. Global spending on lecture capture has increased about 19 percent annually in recent years, according to Alan Greenberg, a partner at market research firm Wainhouse Research. He expects that to reach 25 percent over the next five years.
For now, however, only 8 percent of public universities and about 4 percent of private four-year schools had adopted lecture capture in 2011, according to the Campus Computing Survey, a national poll of college technology officers. The study's author, Kenneth C. Green, wrote in 2010 that "lecture capture is in the early phase of what will likely be widespread campus deployment." Fred Singer, Echo360's 48-year-old chief executive, says he expects the market to "explode" in the next two to three years as more schools evaluate the technology.
Echo360, spun off four years ago from video streaming software maker Anystream to focus on the education market, has raised $35 million in venture capital. Singer says the 85-employee company has a backlog of orders and this year expects nearly to double last year's $12 million in revenue. Echo360 sells its hardware and renewable licenses for its software, charging according to the number of an institution’s full-time students. The average cost to install the systems in five classrooms is $20,000, while the annual licensing fee can be as low as $400 per classroom, says Singer.
Jewesson says lecture capture hasn't altered the way he and others teach at Qatar University. “In reality, we’ve been ‘capturing’ lectures for decades, starting with notes, transitioning to tape recorders, then on to rudimentary software, and now more sophisticated software that captures all electronic output, voice and the 'talking head.'" He recognizes challenges to adoption, however, such as getting faculty and students comfortable with their interactions being recorded.
Roberts, the analyst, says measuring the benefits of lecture capture is difficult. “You can’t track how people have used content,” she says. “You can just monitor for how long.” In classes with Echo360, Singer reports, nine out of 10 students take advantage of the technology—and 86 percent of them report that they understand course materials better as a result.
Singer says Echo360 is betting on sales overseas to drive growth, citing China, Russia and the U.K. as “big opportunities.” The technology doesn't replace teachers, though. Instead, he says, "it gives them choices on how to use their time more efficiently."
To contact the reporter on this story: Karen A. Frenkel at kfrenkel@nyc.rr.com
To contact the editor responsible for this story: John Tozzi at jtozzi2@bloomberg.net
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