Echo360 Pushes ‘Lecture Capture’ Tech into Classrooms from Qatar to the U.S.

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.