Lecture capture in large undergraduate classes: Student perceptions and academic performance

Many higher education institutions are now digitally capturing lectures in courses and making them available on the Web for students to view anytime and in anyplace. This study is an attempt to understand the relationship between student perceptions of lecture capture and academic performance in large undergraduate courses where the practice is most commonplace. Students in five large undergraduate courses (N = 439) responded to a survey on their perceptions of lecture capture used in their course and academic performance was measured by the final course grade. Results suggest that higher achieving students view recordings significantly less often than low achievers. High achievers also tend to fast forward and view certain sections of recordings only once, whereas low achievers view the entire recording multiple times. The conclusion is that lecture capture is more likely to be of benefit to low achieving students.

Research highlights► Lecture capture in large undergraduate classes was studied ► Student responses to a survey on their perceptions of lecture capture were correlated with final course grades ► High achieving students attended class less often and viewed videos less frequently ► Low achieving students viewed videos more often and appeared to benefit most from lecture capture.