Did I Miss That? Student experiences with recorded lectures Jill MacKay (jill.mackay@ed.ac.uk) @jilly_mackay Sarah Chinnery, Kirsty Hughes, Jessie Paterson, Eoghan Clarkson, Susan Rhind

Take Home Messages Lecture recording implemented across University of Edinburgh In veterinary curriculum (content-heavy, professional accreditation degree), lecture recording greatly alleviates concern However – students need guidance for best use Staff concerned about recording enforcing a lack of flexibility in teaching space Support both staff and students to use lecture recording as a tool.

The Curriculum You must be registered with the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons to practise in the UK. Therefore: veterinary graduates must meet the RCVS Day One Competencies

Lecture Recording at R(D)SVS

The Study We wanted to know how student experiences with lecture recording changed over time We also wanted an understanding of staff-specific context We were interested in this specific discipline

Data & Methods 6 students recruited to give us 4 reflective blogs over 6 months 4 students completed task 3 Staff semi-structured interviews Thematic analysis

Results - Students Students frequently talked about about recordings easing stress …   Life gets busy and sometimes being sick, setting up personal accounts, and having other priorities can get in the way of learning and having online lectures puts my mind at ease.

Results - Students However, is this always the ‘best’ use of time?   Time is the most precious asset, if I can speed up a lecture and watch it more quickly and focused, I get more out of it and give myself more time to study the material or have a better school/life balance.

Results - Students The importance of mainstreaming accessibility …   Before lecture-recordings were available, and especially in my first year, I used to use my dictophone frequently to record lecturers and listen to them back in my own study time afterwards. The problem with this, was that I sometimes struggled to understand what the lecturer was saying, relating to explanations of diagrams because I could not always work out what they were talking about on the screen. In addition to this, I found it hard to work out when they moved between slides. This problem has been rectified with the use of lecture recordings, because the program links the speech with what the lecturer has on the projector screen at the time. This makes it much easier to follow

Do Student Opinions Change With Time? Reasons I like the online lectures is that I can get restless and need to walk around a bit so it is nice that I can take it at my own pace and pause when I need to. I prefer to watch the lectures on my own because I need to pause to write things down and groups of people might find that annoying. – Month 1 The lecture recording system is a useful tool to have if you don’t prefer a certain lecturer. That way you can miss class but watch it later and skip through parts where they might drag on, or if they are fast talkers, you can slow it down. The other day it allowed me to be more efficient and pay more attention than if I had been in the class. - Month 2 I was eager to use the lecture recording system for studying but I didn’t use the system as much as I thought. It helped more when they used top hat in class and I forgot to write the answers down. – Month 3

Results - Staff Staff feel pressure to ‘perform’   I feel that there is a kind of pressure that the students really like it and you know we are all driven my student feedback and you kind of feel as if well if I am not giving the students what they want to a certain extent then I am going to suffer in the feedback for that so its always like you feel a wee bit pressured into it in a sense.

Results - Staff Staff support mainstreaming accessibility, even in pressured veterinary curriculum   we are providing a suite of resources lecturers, lecture recording , practical classes, libraries , computers, you know if a student wants to pick and mix how they learn best , and I have spoken to some students who say they hate sitting in lectures.

Results - Staff But – veterinary science can be sensitive . . .   Every now and then you will make a joke to kind of lighten it up you see their faces in the audience who don’t appreciate your jokes and I guess its that kind of fear if you say something like oh god maybe that was a bit too risky or some folk might take offence there its there in video forever more so there is a wee bit of. I guess it does make you watch what you say

Results - Staff Staff worry about losing something ‘precious’ …   if someone asked a question, I mean crikey yeah, you'll take time out to have a chat but you know I guess it does depend, it is in the back of your mind that you only have a certain amount of time because of the time, the technical, you know the time limit on a particular lecture because you might run out of time whereas if you know there is nobody coming after you In the lecture theatre and a student as a question you might be tempted to have a bit of a longer chat because you can, although if you know that they are not going anywhere else as well, you could take longer time but if you are contrained by the recording . . .   Even if everyone live streamed in and I just lectured from here, I think I would miss the interaction but then with the practicals there are loads of other oppurtunities to make that

Key Observations Students report a range of methods of ‘studying’. If content is important – how useful is it to watch a lecture on double speed? Why do students watch full lectures at double speed? Staff are sensitive to the ‘documentation’ of what they say No subject is without controversy at HE level

Other Work Large university-wide evaluation exploring staff and student attitudes. Discipline differences important for staff Less important for students We see here recognition of how the discipline can shape the use of the technology. Content heavy

Our Big Conclusion Lecture recording has the potential to transform lectures Very important that it is considered as a tool to be used flexibly – it does not constrain the lecture!

Thank you