How do I use the whiteboard capture cameras in Engineering classrooms?

Note: Installation of the whiteboard capture cameras is ongoing. Refer to the Lecture Recording Service Availability page for the current list of locations.

Video Overview

Step-by-Step Instructions

Most College of Engineering classrooms include an additional camera for capturing what is written on the whiteboard. This feature can be used with the built-in recorder as part of the CAEN Lecture Recording Service, with the Zoom Live Streaming PC, or both at the same time:

Lecture recording camera

If you use the room’s built-in lecture recorder, it will record the whiteboard as a third stream, along with the main camera and what is shown on the projector/display. To make this available to students viewing your recordings, just go to the lecture recording management website and find your site, and click Site Info:

Site info button

Under Default Options, check the Enable Whiteboard checkbox, then click Save:

Enable whiteboard checkbox

After setting that option, you can change whether the whiteboard is shown on a recording-by-recording basis if you wish.  That option is on the Settings page for each recording, under Options:

Enable whiteboard dropdown

Note that if the room is equipped with a whiteboard camera, the recorder will always record the whiteboard by default. These settings just control whether it is made available to the students when viewing the recording. This means you can enable whiteboard capture even after a recording has been made.

When the students play back the recording, the whiteboard capture appears as a window on the right side of the player:

Example of lecture recording with whiteboard

It can be toggled on and off as desired by clicking the blue Whiteboard button in the upper-right corner, and can be scrolled horizontally by clicking and dragging with the mouse cursor.

Note that the whiteboard camera prioritizes image quality and resolution over frame rate. Whiteboard images will typically refresh once every three seconds, but students can always look at the main camera feed to better see the instructor's movement or pointing that might be otherwise lost.

If you are using the Zoom PC in the classroom to live stream your lecture, you can bring up the whiteboard camera as a window that can be shared using Zoom’s usual share screen feature. First start your Zoom meeting as usual. Then, look on the desktop for the icon CAEN Recorder Control and double click it:

CAEN Recorder control app

This brings up some basic controls for the main camera in the room, which is used both for lecture recording and for streaming via Zoom. Notice on the bottom there is a Whiteboard button:

Recorder controls

Click that, and a new window will appear with the live whiteboard image. This window has a couple Preset Views options for choosing what portion of the whiteboard is shown. There is also a custom button option where you can choose a specific portion of the board:

Whiteboard view

Once you have the whiteboard displayed the way you like it, you can use Zoom’s screen-sharing feature to make it visible to your remote students. Just click Share Screen:

Share screen button

Then, find the whiteboard window in the list, and click Share:

Screen sharing options

The remote students can now see the whiteboard as shared content. When you’re done, you can click the Stop Share button.

Details

Article ID: 6281
Created
Mon 8/30/21 9:36 AM
Modified
Fri 7/14/23 1:39 PM