Last year I posted about new meta-analytic research that showed some positive effects of using video recordings as part of teaching. However, regular readers of this blog will know that I am sceptical of the positive effects of video lectures and blended learning. Mostly, that is because I believe that it neatly splits the class into two parts: (1) a group of students that watches (most or all of) the recordings, and whose learning may improve; and (2) a group of students that doesn't watch the recordings, and quickly falls behind. When you combine both groups together in a single analysis, you get the average effect, which will be small and may be positive or negative, depending on the mix of the two groups of students in the class being studied.
In a new article published in the Mathematics Education Research Journal (ungated, and there is a non-technical summary of the research available on The Conversation), Euan Lindsey and Tanya Evans (both University of Auckland) review the literature on the use of lecture capture in mathematics. Lecture capture as Lindsey and Evans define it is fairly broad as a concept, including:
...“synchronized audio and visual recordings of live lectures, which students can download to view at their own leisure”... but also includes... online lectures— recordings of the lecture content done by the lecturer (not necessarily during the live lecture) which have a one‐to‐one correspondence with a live lecture from the course. Sometimes those online lectures can be split into many shorter videos—on average, 7 min long...
So, this definition covers what I was doing in my class before the coronavirus pandemic (recording live in-class lectures), as well as how most lecturers approached lecturing during the pandemic lockdowns (recording whole lectures, or short videos). Lindsey and Evans base their review on 16 studies published over the period from 2010 to 2020, and look at student perceptions of lecture capture (LC), its effect on attendance, and its effect on learning. On the first point (student perceptions), they find that:
Students see immense value in LC because of the flexibility it provides, this being the most obvious and widely accepted perception of LC... Because the lecture information can be accessed at any time, LC availability is perceived to facilitate a better study/work/life balance and provide equitable access to content for students who have other commitments...
So, it's all good from the students' perspective. In relation to attendance though:
Of the 16 relevant studies this review identified, 10 did not consider attendance, none reported a positive impact, three sources reported insignificant/no change, and four reported a negative impact on attendance...
In all studies that explicitly reported a drop in attendance, the total attendance reductions were in the range of 23–30%.
In that case, lecturers' concerns that lecture capture reduces class attendance are borne out (at least, in some studies), although that hasn't been my experience (until this year!). Finally, the most important result (in my opinion) relates to the effect on learning:
Of the 16 studies investigated in this review, six did not report on attainment, one concluded the neutral impact of LC (with the exception of students who were not following up on their intentions to watch LC after missing a lecture—this practice was strongly associated with poor grades...), one concluded a positive relationship, and nine concluded a negative relationship between LC and attainment...
Of the eight studies that reported a negative impact on attainment, all found that regular substitution of live lecture attendance with LC was associated with lower achievement...
Despite the inconsistency number of cited studies with negative findings (was it eight, or nine?), the overall conclusion is clear - lecture capture likely reduces student achievement. There are a couple of important caveats though:
...these studies did see benefits to groups of students who used LC supplementarily... but once a student used LC as their primary learning tool, they underperformed compared to their peers attending lectures...
Some studies found that students who were already performing poorly were the most affected by the introduction of LC...
The second point accords well with my impression of the impact of lecture capture, especially when, as Lindsey and Evans note:
Broadly, there appear to be two types of LC users: students who supplement attendance and students who substitute attendance. The latter group seems to be getting disproportionally larger, considering the trend over the decade.
I suspect that those two groups would correlate pretty strongly with the two groups of students I mentioned at the beginning of this post. However, as can be inferred from this post, it no doubt depends on how you go about the lectures, and what works in-class is unlikely to work as well online. And that suggests that the live capture approach is best only when used to supplement attendance.
Read more:
- Online vs. blended vs. traditional classes
- Flipped classrooms work well for top students in economics
- Flipped classrooms are still best only for the top students
- Online classes lower student grades and completion
- Online classes may also make better students worse off
- Meta-analytic results support some positive effects of using videos on student learning
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