What’d I miss? A qualitative exploration of student and staff experiences with lecture recording over an academic year

Abstract

Lecture recording is the process of capturing the visual and/or audio aspects of a lecture for students to access at their own convenience. Recorded lectures have the potential to benefit student learning through making lecture content more accessible, however effects on student attendance, attainment and engagement are debated. This is of particular interest to professional degrees, which teach to standards set by professional bodies and have limited control over curriculum content. The aim of this study was to explore student and staff use and opinion of lecture recording over an academic year in a professional degree to see how patterns of use may change after lecture recording becomes common place. Four students provided longitudinal blogs over the academic year (four blogs per students) which were thematically coded. Student use of lecture recording changed over the academic year, and was sensitive to the structure of the veterinary programme. Concurrently, semi-structured interviews with staff members highlighted frustrations with lecture recording technology and a perceived lack of flexibility due to recording. Guidance and support is needed to help staff and students to overcome these problems.