Tele-Lecture?
By Sakina Walsh JGSM '10
Issue date: 5/1/09 Section: Features
Three years ago, Ryan Morris was a Cornell undergrad furiously scribbling lecture notes he didn't quite understand. An engineering student, Ryan was also an athlete and as a result of schedule conflicts, he often had no choice but to miss class. After missing important chunks of lectures, connecting the dots upon his return wasn't always easy. When Morris took an entrepreneurship class as an elective, he suddenly had an idea: what if class lectures could be video-taped, so that students could catch up on the course material on their own time? It would be like TIVO for class, with all necessary "episodes" conveniently recorded and accessible 24/7.
Morris partnered with Cornell PhD candidate Paul George. In spring of 2008, they introduced VideoNote, a service that would record classroom lectures and make them available online. The duo spoke with professors across various schools at Cornell and initially received a favorable reaction. They obtained a legal agreement allowing them to begin taping at Cornell. But just two days before classes began, then interim provost David Harris intercepted the recordings, claiming that the effects of the service would need to be studied first. Rallying the support of professors at the engineering school, the VideoNote co-founders managed to overturn Harris' decision and procured funding from the university to run a trial with six courses during the fall semester. 1500 students had the chance to test-drive VideoNote, which offered lecture videos alongside a searchable index of class notes, viewable side by side, allowing the user to skip around the video based on content.
Every Johnson student can give examples of being inundated by assignments and deadlines, while trying to interview in the midst of it all. One of the unfortunate conflicts of business school is the balance between job-hunting and academics, as interviews often cause students to miss class. This is particularly challenging during the fast-paced core, when an entire topic can be covered in just one class. VideoNote is thus a seemingly perfect solution: students can view the videos while away on interviews or upon their return. "I think that it will be very beneficial to students, especially when we are going through the interview process. Students miss several classes for interviews and informationals, and this would make it easier to catch-up. It would also be very beneficial during the core since we are juggling so many academic, professional and extracurricular responsibilities," says Kanchan Daswani, a first-year MBA and member of the Student Council.
Morris partnered with Cornell PhD candidate Paul George. In spring of 2008, they introduced VideoNote, a service that would record classroom lectures and make them available online. The duo spoke with professors across various schools at Cornell and initially received a favorable reaction. They obtained a legal agreement allowing them to begin taping at Cornell. But just two days before classes began, then interim provost David Harris intercepted the recordings, claiming that the effects of the service would need to be studied first. Rallying the support of professors at the engineering school, the VideoNote co-founders managed to overturn Harris' decision and procured funding from the university to run a trial with six courses during the fall semester. 1500 students had the chance to test-drive VideoNote, which offered lecture videos alongside a searchable index of class notes, viewable side by side, allowing the user to skip around the video based on content.
Every Johnson student can give examples of being inundated by assignments and deadlines, while trying to interview in the midst of it all. One of the unfortunate conflicts of business school is the balance between job-hunting and academics, as interviews often cause students to miss class. This is particularly challenging during the fast-paced core, when an entire topic can be covered in just one class. VideoNote is thus a seemingly perfect solution: students can view the videos while away on interviews or upon their return. "I think that it will be very beneficial to students, especially when we are going through the interview process. Students miss several classes for interviews and informationals, and this would make it easier to catch-up. It would also be very beneficial during the core since we are juggling so many academic, professional and extracurricular responsibilities," says Kanchan Daswani, a first-year MBA and member of the Student Council.
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