Opting-Out of the "Rewind Revolution": legitimizing the transmission model with automatic classroom capture

I received the following notice from Drexel, where I am an adjunct:

All on-campus classes starting this upcoming winter term that are able to be captured using Apresso/Echo 360 will be, and materials will be made available to students via a Blackboard course shell. Please include in your syllabus the following sentence - “Lectures may be recorded and/or streamed and rebroadcast for educational purposes only.” If you do not want your course made available to students using this technology, you need to request an exemption by 12/22/08.

I've no immediate personal interest. (Indeed - I should be so lucky as to get a classroom sufficiently functional as to have Echo 360 in it! I'd be happy for a !#@%ing data projector and a median room temperature under 85.) Still I'm troubled.

I've no doubt that there are some introductory, knowledge-driven, lecture-centric classes where these recordings will undoubtedly be very convenient for students and may even enhance learning. Nevertheless, I'm troubled. This default recording and rebroadcasting of class time marks the apotheosis of the transmission model of learning. Class is not a learning experience brought into existence by the active participation of all, it's an artifact facilitating the transmission of knowledge from one head to the next. You can consume the class live as it transpires if the mood strikes, or you can do at your leisure. Whichever suits you.

This is of course a horrific mindset and one I have struggled over the years to resist. Students don't consume the learning, they create the learning and they do so in the moment. Save 40 or so minutes out of 150, my classes would be largely pointless to watch after the fact, I'm proud to say. What happens there is not a performance; it is not intended to be consumed ex post facto (or at all, for that matter).

Fortunately, an instructor may seek to opt-out of the auto-recording if it "does not advance the educational goals of the course". Call me judgmental, but my inclination is to say shame on you if you fancy it does advance the educational goals of your course.

The opt-out nature of this arrangement gives me the creeps. Isn't it de facto surveillance? Perhaps the professors can opt out, but can the students? No, it would seem, and once again I find that troubling. Apparently the single sentence we were instructed to add to our syllabi -- "Lectures may be recorded and/or streamed and rebroadcast for educational purposes only." is supposed to take care of that, which strikes me as grossly inadequate.

The chilling effect of such recording not only on the spontaneity of the learning environment but on the free exchange of ideas worries me too. Will an instructor be less inclined to take up controversial or difficult issues and follow boldly wherever they might lead knowing that the proceedings will be going down on the permanent record? I fear I might be.

IP questions abound as well, although it would seem Drexel's policy to my non-lawerly eyes seems to make no ownership claim to classroom materials.

Lecture capture technology does not really excite me that much. There are authentic uses and ones I'm interested in myself (providing online classes with a window into classroom-based analogues running in parallel could be very useful, although I'd favor doing it is real time with Connect or WebEx). Whatever other controversies remain, it's exceptionally difficult to argue that classroom capture should be opt-out.