How Webcasting Helped Wayne State Fight the Nursing Shortage

Other Benefits
According to Puente, employing Accordent’s services has also led to many other benefits for the College of Nursing. For example, teachers can use recorded lectures to make their lives easier in a variety of ways.

"Over time, as [the faculty has] built up the library, they can go through and cut out pieces to help students either drill it in, study more, or add extra benefits," she says. "And by using those lectures or that content that’s kind of already in the can, more students can enroll. There’s more lecture time available."

She also says students at Wayne State have benefited from the ability to download MP3s of lectures online. According to Puente, students can now listen to the MP3 versions wherever they go, allowing them to multitask more easily. In addition, if they are forced to miss class because of illness or for other unforeseen reasons, they can still access the information later.

According to Germain, giving students this access is especially important today because students expect it and sometimes need it to fully grasp what is being taught.

"They’ve been used to that since they’ve been in the cradle," she says. "Colleges are buying all kinds of capture devices so they can have that online archive for students to go back and review material, whether for exams or maybe they just didn’t understand it all that well, or maybe they’re not native English speakers and they want to slow it down. Maybe they’re language arts people in a chemistry class and they want to slow it down."