Everything You Need to Know About the New Lecture Recording Policy

April 29, 2019

The University of Auckland has announced a new set of rules around the recording of lectures. Hooray! Unfortunately for interested students, the update is hidden away on a back-page of the university website, shrouded in a haze of boring legal language and gross looking Arial fonts. Boo! Luckily for you, Craccum has you covered – Emma Rogers saves us another university reading and summarises the new policy.

Everybody loves lecture recordings. That’s why you should be excited to hear that the university has updated its Lecture Capture and Release Policy and Procedures page. The changes give students a new set of rights in regards to university recordings – most importantly, the right to demand recorded lectures.

The Good:

From the 16th of July, all lectures will be required to be recorded (except where exemptions have been given – more on that later).

Recordings must be released to students within 72 hours of the class finishing. The 72 hours to release does not include the weekend but does include public holidays.

All recorded lectures will be stored in an archive. This will allow the university to reuse them in the future.

Tutorials, small classes, workshops and “secondary teaching modes” are not covered by the mandatory recording rule.

The recording of lecturers is a staff responsibility. This means the onus is on staff to ensure they are recorded, edited, and released on time. Staff will also be expected to notify students that lecture recordings are in fact being recorded.

Aside from the exemptions mentioned earlier (again – more on this later), staff members are forbidden from editing or changing recordings to disadvantage students who are not present at the lecture. They are also forbidden from changing the recording settings to disadvantage students. However, lecturers may edit out parts of the lecture they believe may infringe on copyright.

The Bad:

Lecturers will be able to apply for exemptions to the mandatory recording rule (boooo!) where they can prove that:
the primary mode of delivery in the course is not conducive to capture and release of the recordings, and provides limited pedagogical benefits for students;
the release of lecture recordings leads to increased risk of copyright infringement and other options to manage the risk are are impractical; or
lectures in a course contain personal information or use case studies which, if released, may infringe privacy or confidentiality, and other options to manage these concerns are impractical.
Applications for exemptions will be made to the dean, or a delegate of the dean. Ultimately, whether an exemption should be granted will rest with them. If a student feels an exemption should not be granted, they can appeal to the deputy Vice-Chancellor to have it overturned.
Students are required to acknowledge that recorded lectures are supplemental to the course and do not substitute regular attendance.
Students will also be expected to acknowledge that technical difficulties may prevent a particular lecture from being recorded, or may delay its release. In situations where this occurs, archived recordings may be released instead of the usual recordings. But note the wording – as the policy currently stands, lecturers won’t be under any obligation to release past recordings of classes where they fail to correctly record them. It is ultimately up to their discretion.