Fifteen minutes of fame

In 1968 Andy Warhol forecast that "In the future everybody will be world famous for fifteen minutes".
Since that time, the internet, specifically social media such as YouTube, Twitter, Facebook etc. have given ordinary people the opportunity to strive towards Andy's prophesy.  And some really do take the quote as a challenge!

Today's HE students have grown up as "Generation Y digital natives" surrounded by a plethora of images, personalised messages, "Channels" and with the opportunity and encouragement to see this as a legitimate source of information, news and entertainment.
So, the expectation of today's students is that their experience at University will, at the very least, acknowledge the fact that their preferred means of communication is digital, their learning preferences are moving from the face to face and towards the on-line and that high quality images are the norm.

Enter...Lecture capture.

For many years the technology to "capture" lectures has been available and is installed in many lecture rooms across the world.  Akin to YouTube it provides video and audio (sometimes with an unflattering image of the lecturer, taken from an ill positioned camera) of lectures and should have many advantages for today's students - even if their first language is the same as the lecturer and they have no particular learning needs.

Some lecturers use "capture" to achieve their 15 minutes of fame - others consider, deeply, the implications for traditional classroom teaching and wonder if the demands of students for full value in exchange for their life of debt will outweigh or overtake the important discussion that we must have: When is lecture capture beneficial to learning and when is it a problem?