Most Swiss institutions now record their teaching. How many have said why, for whom, and for how long?

 

Download the positioning paper : Lecture capture Eduhub guide

Since the pandemic, lecture capture has become ordinary infrastructure. Swiss practice now ranges from recording almost everything (ETH Zurich, EPFL), to recording by default unless the teacher declines (UNIGE since 2023), to targeted capture with a one-week window (Unil School of Biology), to leaving the choice to each teacher (UZH, Unine, ZHAW). We have no shared framework and almost no Swiss data.

The research gives a clear signal. Students who attend and use recordings to review specific passages tend to do better. Students who use recordings instead of attending tend to do worse. And the students who gain most are those who work, care for others, study in a second language or live with a disability.

AI raises the stakes. Once transcribed, a recording becomes a text that can be summarised, fed to a chatbot or reused, and few policies say what is allowed.

This guide, proposed to the Eduhub+ community, offers:

  1. An overview of the evidence and of nine Swiss institutional models
  2. Seven decisions for a capture policy, from purpose to annual review
  3. A legal and ethical checklist for the Swiss context
  4. Chapters for teachers and for students, drawing on the work of Emily Nordmann
  5. Rules to write down for AI processing of recordings
  6. Ready-to-adapt templates and a self-assessment grid for institutions

It is a draft for discussion. I would especially welcome comments from colleagues in German-speaking and Italian-speaking Switzerland, from IT and legal services, and from students.

How does your institution handle recordings? What would you add?

Last modified: Tuesday, 3 November 2026, 3:33 PM