Live Teaching Recording

This policy replaces the Lecture Capture policy and procedures and should be read alongside the FAQs for administrators, staff and students.

Introduction

1.1. This Policy applies to all programmes that lead to St George's awards. All teaching staff contributing to these programmes are expected to record their live teaching in accordance with the definition in sections 1 and 2 of this document. Availability of recordings support effective learning for all students and are part of our responsibility to make reasonable adjustments for students with specific learning needs under the Equality Act 2010.

1.2. St George's has invested in institutional systems to facilitate the recording of audiovisual material for teaching and learning.

1. Panopto. The Panopto system allows lecturers to record live lectures in the lecture theatres and teaching rooms. This can include the capturing of the room/device audio, presentation slides, computer screen, and presenter/room video. Panopto can also be installed on the lecturer's personal computer so that pre-recorded material can be made available to students, for example, to facilitate flipped-classroom pedagogies.
2. Microsoft Teams. Microsoft Teams can be used to deliver live hybrid lectures, and webinars for online teaching and learning. Entire sessions can be recorded and later uploaded to Panopto for dissemination. Guidance relating to Hybrid Teaching is available on canvas 
3. Canvas Conferences (Big Blue Button). The Conference Tool within Canvas makes use of the Big Blue Button plugin to facilitate the delivery of live lectures and webinars for online teaching and learning. Entire sessions can be recorded and later uploaded to Panopto for dissemination.

1.3. All three systems above allow for the capture of PowerPoint slides, synchronised to audio, and the final recordings can be accessed by students via links within the Canvas Virtual Learning Environment (VLE). 

1.4. Panopto is also the official media repository of St George's. All recordings of live teaching made via Microsoft Teams or Canvas Conferences must be uploaded to the respective module folder in Panopto to facilitate easy access from the Virtual Learning Environment, Canvas.

Definition

2.1. This policy covers live teaching only. For the purposes of this policy, live teaching is defined as a face-to-face or online, teacher-led session, delivered to students synchronously, typically using PowerPoint or equivalents.
It is not expected that, in allowing a recording to be taken, the learning experience of students will be adversely affected.

This policy does not cover teaching and learning activities that do not meet this definition.

2.2. The types of teaching activities that fall within this policy are below:

Exclusions

3.1. Where there is a compelling reason for why a live teaching session should not be recorded, teaching staff must complete an opt-out form in advance, stating the reasons, and provide details of suitable alternatives that meets the needs of students with specific learning needs.

3.2. The opt-out form can be completed online at least two weeks before the scheduled teaching. Formal approval must be granted by the Deputy Principal (Education) where an opt-out has been completed.

3.3. This policy applies also to guests and visiting lecturers. Guest and visiting lecturers may prefer that recordings of their live teaching sessions are not made and should be given advice on opting out of this policy. However, it would be useful if live teaching sessions offered by guests can be recorded because these colleagues are less available to respond to student queries in the days and weeks following the session.

Disclaimer

4.1. St George's is committed to providing teaching that is authoritative, up-to-date, and well-informed. From time to time, inadvertent errors may be made by staff and these errors may be captured in recordings. St George's has full confidence in its staff and expects that errors of this kind will be infrequent. When errors are made known, St George's will take appropriate corrective action. 

Applicable legislation

5.1. Under the Equality Act 2010, St George's is obliged to make reasonable adjustments to its teaching and learning strategies to support the learning of students with specific learning needs where they have a disability that "has a physical or mental impairment, and the impairment has a substantial and long-term adverse effect on (his or her) ability to carry out normal day-to-day activities". In many cases, reasonable adjustments will include the recording and captioning of live teaching sessions. Whatever arrangements are put in place for these students must be robust and may be over and above any generic procedure. Specifically, some students have a Statement of Support Needs (SOSN) that indicates that the student should be allowed to take a personal recording of a lecture to support their learning. If a SOSN indicates that allowing the student to record a lecture is a reasonable adjustment, it is should not be refused.

5.2. To enhance accessibility, all live teaching recordings uploaded to Panopto will automatically be captioned by machine as they are being made available to students. This will be arranged by LTS. Where a student has an SOSN and would benefit from higher quality, human-generated captions, reasonable efforts will be made to provide this facility. The Disability Team will liaise with LTS to facilitate this.

IPR/Copyright issues

6.1. The recording, and other copyright works (e.g., literary, dramatic, musical, artistic work, or a film) created by staff for inclusion in the recording, are works specifically commissioned by the University. The ownership of the copyright in these works will be determined in accordance with the University's Intellectual Property Policy. 

6.2. Teaching staff must not include third-party copyright material or material licensed for limited distribution in their recordings unless there is a written agreement in place between the University and the third party permitting this. Where the material is made available under license (e.g. Creative Commons), the terms of the licence must be strictly adhered to and the source of the material should be correctly attributed. In the case where the material is not licensed, or no agreement has been made with the copyright holder, staff should instead refer students to the source of the material.

6.3. If a video recording of a lecturer is made, this may qualify as a performance (as defined by the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 (CDPA)). In this case, the lecturer will have a separate distinct right known as a performer's right. This exists apart from the copyright and is also a right that can be dealt with in the same way as any other intellectual property right and it can therefore be licensed or assigned by the lecturer.

6.4. By default, recordings are only accessible to St George's students and staff via a secure login. Teaching staff may use their professional judgement to make Panopto content downloadable where appropriate so that users can view recorded content offline.

Responsibilities of students

7.1. Acknowledgement of responsible use: St George's believes that the overwhelming majority of its students are responsible learners who will not misuse recordings. If a student does misuse a recording in any way (e.g., through malicious editing or by selling or by distributing recordings via emails or other platforms), existing disciplinary procedures and Fitness to Practise procedures are sufficient to allow St George's to deal with the misuse. Students should be aware of their responsibilities and understand that the misuse of recordings will be treated very seriously by St George's.

7.2. Permission, respect for privacy and consent: Prior to recording any live teaching session, whether on-campus or online, students must seek explicit permission from the lecturer - this includes audio-only recordings. In sessions involving discussions or contributions from other students, those students' verbal consent for recording must be obtained. This applies to both formal and informal educational settings. Students are responsible for ensuring that any recordings made do not infringe on the privacy rights of others.

7.3. Secure and ethical Storage: Students are responsible for the secure storage of personal recordings. They must ensure that these recordings are not accessible to unauthorised individuals and are not shared or distributed in any form. Personal copies of recordings should be deleted once their academic purpose has been fulfilled, or upon ceasing to be a student at St George's, whichever comes first.

7.4. Use of AI and third-party tools: The use of AI bots or third-party recording tools not provided by St George’s is strongly discouraged due to concerns over data protection, privacy, and academic integrity. If students opt to use such tools, they do so at their own risk, and must adhere to the university's data protection and privacy policies.

7.5. Accessibility needs: Students requiring recordings for accessibility reasons should work with the university's disability support services to ensure their needs are met in a manner that respects the privacy and consent of all participants.

Procedural arrangements

8.1. Overall responsibility for policy in this area rests with the Quality Assurance and Enhancement Committee (QAEC) and the QAEC chair. Operational responsibility rests with the Centre for Technology in Education (CTiE), specifically the Learning Technology Services section (LTS).

8.2. Notices will be placed on lecterns to draw the attention of staff to the policy.  There is a set of Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) documents for administrators, staff and students respectively. These are to be used alongside the policy. Hyperlinks to the FAQs can be found in the preamble to this Policy.

8.3. Recordings of live teaching will normally be available within three working days.  The delay is to enable members of the teaching staff to review and edit recordings prior to publication if necessary.

Retention and reuse of recordings of live teaching

9.1. Recordings will normally be retained for a maximum period of six years.

9.2. Recordings of live teaching sessions should generally not be reused as part of teaching. Students expect to be able to view a recording of the session that they attended. In circumstances where the proposed session could not take place, or a technical failure or human error meant that a recording could not be made, it is permissible to reuse an old recording, but this practice should be avoided wherever possible.

9.3. Recordings made by an academic who subsequently leaves the university may be used for the remainder of the academic year and remain intact on the archived module for the enrolled students to revisit but must not be re-used with new students in future academic years without the written permission of the academic.

9.4. Where a guest and visiting lecturer has previously delivered recorded live teaching that is deemed important by the course team, the recording may be re-used in another academic year if the individual is not available to provide the lecture again, provided that a written permission has been granted by the individual.

9.5. Points outlined in 9.1 through 9.4 do not apply to pre-recorded bite-size lecture/videos which are intended to be re-used for as long as their content remains relevant and current.

Monitoring and evaluation 

10.1. Learning Technology Services will submit an annual report to QAEC on the implementation of the Policy. This is expected to include:

• Insights on use of Panopto across St George's including usage data, captioning data and costs.
• Summary of student feedback from relevant channels such as NSS, SES, Student Representatives, and the Canvas Survey.
• Data on agreed opt-outs from the Policy

10.2. The annual report to QAEC will be received in the autumn term and relate to the previous academic year.

Relevant Guidance documents

11. Guidance for recording teaching activities off-campus