MU received recognition for outstanding overall success in implementing the Tegrity lecture capture program.

The university earned the Student Achievement Award from the Tegrity program for the 2010-2011 school year. MU logged the largest number of online views and the largest number of viewing users of all universities in the nation.

Vice Provost for Undergraduate Studies Jim Spain said the award was an honor for the university.

“I think it represents our efforts to really advance student learning and to effectively utilize the technology that’s available to support student learning,” he said.

Tegrity is an online program that allows professors to record audio files of their lectures. It also records the computer screen for the duration of the lecture.

MU began piloting lecture capturing through the Department of Chemistry four years ago. From there, the university adopted Tegrity for the entire campus.

Statistics professor Larry Ries has been using Tegrity for quite a while.

“I started using it part-way through the first semester it was widely available,” he said.

He uses Tegrity to post lectures for his Statistics 1200 course, an introduction-level lecture class. Ries said the program has been very successful for him.

“Everybody seems to like it,” he said. “The comments and evaluations are all uniformly positive. I think it works very well with this kind of big lecture class because the thing you lose (in a lecture) is class participation.”

Freshman John Sjobeck uses the program for his Introduction to Leisure Studies course.

“I use it to further expand my knowledge of what I learned in class,” he said.

Faculty members use the program in many different ways. Spain said some professors post “pre-lecture” audio files for students to listen to. Others post a summary of the day’s in-class lecture.

“(Tegrity’s uses) are entirely up to how our faculty adapts it and adopts it to support their teaching,” Spain said.

He said he encourages faculty to get creative.

“Let’s use the technology to support student learning in a way that is most effective,” he said.

Ries said he also posts exam reviews for students who choose not to attend. He even used the program for an online course.

“Last summer I taught an entirely online section of Stat 1200,” he said.

He posted old lectures as well as supplemental material for his online students. Ries said some professors argue that the program is counterproductive and discourages students from attending classes. He disagrees.

“For somebody who is just going to go to the lecture and listen, (Tegrity) seems just as good,” he said.

Sjobeck said he has listened to lectures online for classes he missed.

“I’ve only done it twice but it’s nice to have,” he said. “It’s a nice back-up plan.”