We welcomed Dr Kasia Banas to the TILE Network where she presented brand-new data on how students use lecture recordings and their attitudes towards lecture recordings. Kasia started with a statement that resonated with me: “The question is not ‘should we record lectures or not’, but rather ‘how can we support students with lecture recordings and how are students using lecture recordings’ ”. Thus, embracing lecture recordings and starting to think about how they can be used in the best way to support student learning and lecturer teaching is the better approach to this development in education. After all, there is no robust link between provision of lecture recordings and attendance – with studies showing a drop (Edwards & Clinton, 2019) and others showing no link, but rather other moderating factors that contribute to a decrease in attendance (Nordmann et al., 2019).
A clear guidance for lecturers and students on how to use lecture recordings is missing. To fill this gap, Nordmann et al. (in press) have put together a lecture recording guide for students and lecturers that provides support on how to use lecture recordings in conjunction with other effective learning strategies (such as spaced learning, retrieval practice, and effective note-taking). The link to this resource is provided below.
In this reflection, I will focus on one study presented by Kasia on the student attitudes towards attending, supplementing, and substituting lectures. Kasia and her colleagues not only asked about the students’ own perception towards these approaches, but also asked what they thought their lecturers and other student peers think (i.e., perceived peer/lecturer norm). So, the three outcomes of interest for the peer norm and lecturer norm were worded like this:
| Peer norm | |
| Attendance | How useful do you believe Psychology 1A STUDENTS feel the *live lectures* are in this course? |
| Supplement | How useful do you believe Psychology 1A STUDENTS feel the *recorded lectures* are in this course, when they are watched after attending the lecture? |
| Substitute | How useful do you believe Psychology 1A STUDENTS feel the *recorded lectures* are in this course, when watched instead of attending lectures in person? |
| Lecturer norm | |
| Attendance | How useful do you think your LECTURERS in Psychology 1A consider the *live lectures* to be as a teaching tool? |
| Supplement | How useful do you think your LECTURERS in Psychology 1A consider the *recorded lectures* to be as a teaching tool, when they are watched after attending the lecture? |
| Substitute | How useful do you think your LECTURERS in Psychology 1A consider the *recorded lectures* to be as a teaching tool, when watched instead of attending lectures in person? |
And the findings were:
Attendance: Students showed a clear positive attitude towards attending live lectures. Their own attitude was in line with what they thought other students and their lecturers would think.
Supplement: Students showed a positive attitude towards using lecture recordings as supplement – after having attended the live lectures. Again, their own attitude corresponded to what they thought their peers and lecturers would think.
Substitute: The findings for this were more complex. Students’ own attitude towards substituting attending live lectures with the recordings were quite neutral (i.e., neither positive nor negative). Students thought their lecturers would have a negative, neutral, or positive attitude towards substituting live lectures with recordings (i.e., the distribution was equal across all attitudes). However, when asked about their peers’ attitudes towards substituting live lectures with recordings most of them said that they think others would have a positive attitude towards this approach. This is striking because it clearly contradicts their own reported attitude.
This line of research is only starting, but promises to be a crucial step towards fine-tuning recommendations for lecturers and students in regard to the use of lecture recordings.
Hope this helps!
Supporting material:
Webinar recording (including chat window)
Abstract of the talk:
Lecture recording continues to be a much-discussed topic in education, and there is a growing amount of evidence that accessing recorded lectures at home can be a beneficial revision practice. This may be especially true among students whose first language is not English, or those who have other responsibilities beside their university course. In this talk, I will present preliminary results from an ongoing study of first-year psychology students at the University of Edinburgh, where we collected data about their use of lecture recordings, as well as administrative and questionnaire data on other learning practices and attitudes. A novel aspect of this study was its focus on norms, where we asked students to report what they thought their lecturers’ and classmates’ attitudes towards lecture attendance and lecture recording were. One interesting result was that while students reported that their lecturers set a positive norm for attending lectures, they were not sure what their lecturers thought about using recordings as a substitute for attending live lectures. I will discuss this and other preliminary findings, focusing on the potential targets for an online intervention that we plan to deliver to all first-year students next year. Project collaborators: Eva Murzyn and Anita Tobar-Henriquez.
About the speaker:
Dr Kasia Banas is a Lecturer in Behavioural Sciences in Healthcare within the School of Medicine, Dentistry and Nursing, University of Glasgow. She is a social psychologist by training and has a keen interest in how social factors influence behaviour, including studying and learning. Before coming to Glasgow, Kasia spent four years working in a teaching-focussed role at the University of Edinburgh, where she studied the extent to which first-year students identify with their study discipline or university, and whether this has consequences for their educational outcomes or wellbeing. Now, in collaboration with Dr Eva Murzyn from the University of Edinburgh, Kasia is working on a longitudinal project exploring the use of lecture recordings among first-year Psychology students. You can follow her on Twitter @edinkasia.
