Podcast Highlights: Targeted Educational Videos From Repurposed Lecture-capture Footage

Using instructional videos - either as supplemental content or in a flipped classroom - has become increasingly popular among students and instructors in higher education CS courses. However, producing or finding appropriate videos can be expensive and time-consuming. This experience report describes a novel, relatively low-cost approach to creating customized video resources that requires very little instructor time. This approach leverages widely available screen capture and podcasting technologies to produce a suite of 2-5 minute "podcast highlights" videos from full-length live lecture footage. Podcast highlights distill lecture concepts into short segments, and supplementary annotations help illustrate these concepts further. Podcast highlights can be created quickly by undergraduates with just a small amount of instructor supervision. We created podcast highlights videos for four undergraduate CS courses. In a pilot study with two of these classes, many students used the highlights videos regularly and praised their usefulness for both previewing and reviewing class concepts. This report presents the podcast highlights production process, student reaction to and use of podcast highlights videos, and best practices for creation and deployment of these customized educational videos.