Lecture recordings: examining the evidence

Moira Sarsfield
Department of Life Sciences, Faculty of Natural Sciences, Imperial College London.

There has been discussion over recent years about the possibility of recording lectures
and distributing recordings via the VLE. Initial feedback from student surveys on the
subject was very positive, however, there were still some concerns, for example:
 How technically complex and time consuming would it be to record lectures and what
resources (manpower and computing processing/storage) would be required?
 Would students use recordings and, if so, what format would they use?
 Would the provision of recordings result in poorer attendance at lectures?

In Life Sciences we have now developed a reliable system for recording lectures and
have used this on a number of occasions. Specifically we recorded lectures which were
rescheduled after the ‘Snow Days’ in February 2009 and four lectures in early March 2009
which some students were unable to attend because of a timetabling problem.

Figure 1. Do students own a portable media player?
Results obtained from anonymous survey of first year
Biology and BMS students (N=147). Although the vast
majority of students own a media player, only a small
number currently use it to access educational material
(see Figure 2). Students indicate that they are more
likely to access recordings on a computer (77%) rather
than a portable media player (23%).
We are gathering evidence about the usage of these recordings to inform our practice in
future. Some of the questions we have investigated are:
 How much use is made of lecture recordings and what media format is most used? (By
monitoring usage statistics from Blackboard)
 Does the provision of lecture recordings result in poorer attendance at lectures? (By
recording attendance at lectures)
 What resources are required for lecture recording in terms of manpower and computer
processing/storage? (By recording these parameters for individual lectures)
Figure 2. Do students currently use a portable
media player to access educational materials or do
they envisage doing so in future? Results obtained
The initial results have highlighted problems with the interpretation of the earlier survey from anonymous survey of first year Biology and BMS
data. We will continue to gather and analyse hard data to gain insight into the costs and students (N=147). The vast majority of students
indicated that they would use recordings of lectures.
benefits of providing lecture recordings. Keys uses envisaged were to help with understanding
difficult concepts (77%) and during revision (63%).

Figure 3 (left). What do students think about lecture recordings? The image on the left shows the top 50 words
occurring in the Comments field of an anonymous survey of first year Biology and BMS students. (N=147). The size of
each word reflects its frequency. The comments focus overwhelmingly on the benefits of the technology. This is
perhaps unsurprising because the survey did not mention the costs. We have now quantified the resources required
for recording, processing and uploading each 50-minute lecture as 3 man-hours and one dedicated PC plus 185MB of
storage for each lecture and up to 2GB for processing and archiving of raw data.
Figure 4 (above). An opportunity to examine the use of lecture recordings. In March 2009 65 students were
unable to attend four lectures because of a timetabling problem. The remaining152 students were able to attend
these lectures. We announced in advance to both groups that the lectures would be recorded.

Figure 5. Does the availability of lecture recordings
result in decreased lecture attendance? When
surveyed, students state that the availability of lecture
recordings will have no affect on their attendance at
lectures or will make them more likely to attend. This is
not borne out by initial evidence which shows a
statistically significant decrease in attendance of
biology students (N=152) at a recorded lecture (eb23)
in comparison with average attendance at three non-
recorded lectures in the same time slot. (p = 0.03507).
Figure 6. How do students who can attend lectures
make use of lecture recordings? Limited use (15.3%)
was made of lecture recordings in the period
immediately following the lecture. Analysis of tracking
information in the VLE showed that XX% of users of
lecture eb23 recordings had attended this lecture and
YY% had not, i.e. very few non-attenders used the
recordings to catch up with missed material. We will
continue to monitor usage, which may increase during
the pre-exam revision period.
Figure 7. How do students who cannot attend
lectures make use of lecture recordings? Usage of
the lecture recordings in the period immediately
following the lecture was lower than expected (49.6%),
but significantly higher than in the group who could
attend the lectures. Of the 65 students in this group, 44
accessed at least one recording (so 21 did not access
any recordings at all), and on average those who
accessed recordings accessed 2.9 recordings each.
Figure 8. Can we use survey data to predict actual
use? The predicted values are based on survey data
from 147 students extrapolated to the whole biology
class (N=152). The actual values are based on tracking
data from the VLE and are an average of data for four
recorded lectures (eb22-eb25). The predicted values
falsely assume that each student will access all lecture
recordings in all the formats that they specified and
significantly over-estimate the benefit of recording
provision. Great care must be taken in the wording of
survey questions and in their interpretation.