Owson, R. Lupsenhuyk, D., Wideman, H. (2011) Lecture capture in large  undergraduate classes: Student perceptions and academic  performance. Internet and Higher Education, 14, pp.262-268.

A critical analysis

In their study entitled »Lecture capture in large undergraduate classes: Student perceptions and academic performance«, the authors Owson, Lupsenhuyk and Wideman investigate in six large freshman undergraduate classes how lecture videos influence the academic performance of the students. They provided an online questionnaire for the gathering of the data. Out of a total of 2376 students 37% responded to the questionnaire.

The students reported their data themselves. At this point, the question can be asked whether the data are really reliable if the students themselves provide information about their attendance of the live lectures, especially when the physical presence in the lectures is mandatory. In order to satisfy the goals of the study the authors made sure that the questions were understandable and could be answered by the students. On this regard they refer to other research by Kuh in 2001 (p.264).

To this end, the researchers formulate five research questions on the following relationships between:

19% of the total number of students provided their student ID what allowed the link to their grades. Although providing student IDs was voluntary, the study aimed to compare a certain behavior with the grades achieved. With only 19% of the students finally disclosing their ID means that only about a fifth of the data could be used to answer the questions.

The authors came to the following conclusion:

Higher achieving students watched less lecture captures and lower achieving students used the captured lectures more often and more regularly but still had lower grades. More accurately, the authors concluded that question 2 and 3 delivered significant relationships while the obtained data did not deliver significant relationships concerning the other questions.

Question 2 aimed at the relationship between frequency of video access and grades. The data showed that those students who watched the videos one per month or less had „significantly higher grades“ than those who viewed them „more often“ (p267) The authors therefore conclude that „lower achieving students may benefit more from lecture capture than higher achievers or at least they may find the videos more helpful“. (Ibid.) However, the relationship between grade and frequency of access is answered only partly, because there is no hint or even proof that the grades of the lower achievers would be even worse if they hadn’t viewed the lecture recordings.

Question 3 aimed to explore the relationship between viewing patterns and grades. The authors observed that the „highest achieving students fast-forwarded to sections and watched them once, whereas the lowest achievers watched the whole video for each class multiple times or watched the entire recording once and sections multiple times“ (p 267). Thus, the results of the data evaluation for question 2 and the results for question 3 seem to follow the same logic: Higher achievers need less lecture captures and do not watch the whole video while and lower achievers seem to need to watch regularly and often watch the whole video and parts of them, but still have lower grades. (In this context it would be interesting to have more detailed information about the difference of grades between A-students and weaker students, as well as more exact information about what „often“ means or „multiple times“ in respect of the viewing patterns.)

This main conclusion of the study does however not explain the reasons for those results. How come that higher achievers just can do without lecture videos and weaker students stay weak despite watching the captures regularly? Can we know for sure that weaker students wouldn’t perform even weaker without the videos? The authors guess that there is a connection with learning strategies. They assume that the results „tend to reinforce the view that higher achievers bring to their studies well-developed and successful strategies.“ Therefore, A-students might profit from lecture videos but did not rely on them, while it seems that students with less elaborated strategies might take learning with videos for granted. They seem to rely on simply watching the videos, which in the end is too superficial to understand a subject in its depth. The authors emphasize that the learning strategies of students of different performance levels should be examined in a differentiated manner in order to arrive at reliable answers (p.268). In my opinion, further research should focus on the existing or even new data, combined with detailed questions about students‘ learning strategies, attendance, classroom behavior, frequency of viewing the recordings, viewing patterns and the connection to the students‘ grades. One object of investigation should therefore be, as stated by the authors themselves, what other learning strategies and methods the students additionally apply while or after watching the videos and what pattern supports which aspects of learning strategies. In my opinion, it is important to find out whether students take notes while watching the videos, or whether they watch the videos alone or with learning partners, whether they have opportunities to ask questions or whether this can be done in the classroom.

Although the authors mention the limitations of the results, they open up for new research and encourage questions about the students‘ behavioral patterns when watching the video. Since video is on the rise and very popular in higher education, a closer look would be very interesting and relevant.