Audio and Video Recording of Lectures and Class Sessions

More information on Recording Lectures can be found on the Academic and Collaborative Technologies site.

There are several possible reasons a lecture or class session might be recorded for teaching and learning purposes. This process might be initiated by the instructor, or by the student.

For example:

• To develop learning materials for synchronous hybrid and/ or fully online courses
• To provide lecture materials to learners as a study aid
• To provide access to lecture recordings because of a missed class (or in some cases when learners are located in a different time zone from Toronto)
• To provide learner(s) an accommodation associated with a cognitive or physical disability
• Some students may wish to create their own audio or video recording of a lecture as a personal study aid or strategy associated with a cognitive or physical disability

Quality Improvement

Recording a lecture or lecture segment is a great way to review and reflect on your own teaching practice, and in fact, is a common practice within the field of education. This process often involves recording part of a lecture so that an instructor can experience their own teaching from the perspective of a student.

The Centre for Teaching Support & Innovation can also provide individual in-class observations, followed by a consultation, to instructors. You can book a consultation with CTSI online.

Intellectual Property

U of T has encountered several problematic cases of students creating audio and video recordings of lectures and subsequently sharing these recordings with other students, sometimes on publicly accessible websites, and occasionally for profit. Please refer to the sections on copyright and privacy considerations, linked below, to understand our guidelines, and policies on this topic.

Whether instructors wish to record their lectures or have their lectures recorded or not is entirely at the discretion of the individual instructor. Unless a separate contract related to ownership of content is in place, a lecture is considered the intellectual property of the instructor, and copyright guidelines and regulations apply to the recording of lectures. Furthermore, recording a lecture also requires the observation of privacy guidelines and regulations for students in the class whose presence or statements might also be recorded.

Consequently, the following considerations, guidelines, and policies apply to the audio and video recording of lectures:

COPYRIGHT CONSIDERATIONS
PRIVACY CONSIDERATIONS
SAMPLE STATEMENTS FOR COURSE OUTLINES