Cambridge (try to) stop recorded lectures

[Fathercrossmas]

I have to admire their stance here. While I think that recorded lectures should be available for those who might struggle attending or need them to support inclusive learning profiles, I do think for the majority they lose out in the long term. Binge watching lectures a week before an exam is no way to engage with a subject.
www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/01/03/cambridge-scholars-face-student-backlash-scrapping-recorded/

But either you do it, and then it is for all, or it is not done at all. I don't see how some people could get access but not others I do wish we could put genie back in the bottle, for all the reasons Cambridge say. Won't happen at my place though ...

Have you ever tried listening/watching back the recorded lectures? The sound quality is generally really poor because we're shoehorned into unsuitable and overcrowded rooms with limited audio/tech aids and the in person students are not exactly spellbound into silence. It's a bit like trying to hear someone teach on platform 3 in Euston. If students are relying on that in place of attendance I fear for their assessment performance!

You could only allow access for those with assessed learning plans, and/or restrict recordings until end of term (more tricky with coursework based modules).

Our attendance is shocking though as a result of lecture capture and it does impact everyone on the course because I can't run a good interactive session if only 20% turn up, which becomes a vicious circle.

I do not like recording lectures - it inhibits everyone. I also like to be able to use the whiteboard but we have audio recordings with screen capture. Cambridge - all the different depts are taking a different line - be interesting to see what the overall outcome is going forward.

I loved having recorded lectures because I really struggled to concentrate properly in lectures (suspected adhd), and taking notes at the same time was impossible so I didn’t even bother. Recorded lectures allowed me to watch really slowly/ rewind it and get all the important stuff down.

I do feel sorry for all the lecturers talking to empty rooms though. I attended in person and then watched the recording after.

Oh we should definitely do this.

Students are sitting in their rooms never coming to lectures- then they feel disengaged and down about their degree, it all feels pointless.... I wonder why?!

I've had students complain they don't know how to tackle exam questions etc- turns out they never attended lecture or q and a so never ask the lecturer a question 🤦‍♀️

Online lectures are the absolute death of the university experience and the academic community

Op you don't have a share token for that story do you?

We have stopped this year, we decided as a group and explained to students why the decision had been taken. Students with disabilities have permission to record for their own purposes, just like they did before covid. Attendance is back up and students have been much more engaged.

We're not recording lectures either. We stopped last year after the return to in-person teaching.

@JenniferBarkley do those students have to be there to record? Or can others do it for them - and in that case.....it just goes into the wild.

is there a correlation between low NSS scores from students who don’t attend in person?

I wouldn't be surprised. I teach a small enough cohort that students are often identifiable from their NSS comments, and the negative comments are invariably coming from students who have poor attendance, miss deadlines, etc.

The trouble with students being able to record them themselves is trying to work out what's going on after the fact with just a dictaphone recording and some slides is I used to a) struggle to get to the lectures at all and b) if I had sent my dictaphone with someone else they wouldn't put chapter breaks when slides changed and c) the sound quality was often dreadful. Then also d) I didn't know I wasn't going to be well enough to attend so I had to drag myself up and out of bed enough to get someone else to take the dictaphone to lectures when I would probably have recovered better if I was able to rest. In reality it was so hard to effectively use a dictaphone when ill that I just used to go to the lectures anyway and sit there crying with pain while I listened, with the threat of being compelled to intermit if I missed two weeks worth of content in a year.

I do see why they want students to attend lectures in person but I don't think going back to individuals recording the lectures is anywhere near as disability friendly as providing functional, properly done recordings. My brother's university provides them and they're also a really useful revision aid. I don't know how you compel people to attend though - maybe upload recordings only after the end of that term, except for those with disability adjustments?

Well in truth we never know who is sitting there with their phone recording, do we (in lectures or anywhere else in life!). However, it's only students with disabilities that have permission on a case-by-case basis, and lecturers are made aware.

That tends to be students with ADHD, ASD etc. I haven't taught someone with a fluctuating physical condition as @Augend23 describes so I don't know if there are additional adjustments for some students but I have never come across it.

Recordings were an utter disaster for us, and we are universally happy to see the back of them.

I think this is a good idea. I see the students point about it being paternalistic but actually students often don’t make good decisions about their learning and lecturers are better placed to know what will work in general. Some students will miss out because this way of working is genuinely better for them in some way, but in general students do much better if they go to live lectures.

Covid has created real challenges in student engagement - they are so conditioned to being able to do everything remotely - and we need to do something to reset that mindset as I don’t think ultimately it’s going to do them and favours.

Dd’s uni are still recording lectures but also requiring them to sign in to lectures with their ID card.
She has one lecture that’s 2 hours on neurology without a break with a lecturer who just reads the slides out. She attends the lecture, sits doing some other work on her laptop, and then goes through the recoding slowly in manageable chunks later.

Interesting. When I was a student, a long, long time ago, it could be taken for granted that a graduate had had to learn to organise their own time and to rub along with students from all over the UK and beyond. Most of us would also have had to learn to live independently, away from home and family. Any student failing to turn up for lectures would have had to find a way round that by studying independently. Some coped with all of this, some didn't. It was sink or swim, and passing Finals was therefore akin to a swimming certificate.

Do employers now have to find ways to establish whether graduates have spent their entire three years in their room, or actually attended lectures and interacted with other human beings in the flesh?

Do employers now have to find ways to establish whether graduates have spent their entire three years in their room, or actually attended lectures and interacted with other human beings in the flesh

I don’t know exactly how long ago you were a student, but I suspect that employers are aware that there is more to a university education than just lectures. Labs, seminars and tutorials etc.

The days of pure “chalk and talk” are long gone.

40 years since I was a university student, a bit less than that since I was studying for professional exams. When I said lectures, obviously that was shorthand for all the face to face teaching, instruction and learning that went on during a degree course. Online didn't exist, so the only options were to get a place on a course where students had face to face teaching, or do a correspondence course. The Open University was probably the only HEI operating on that basis back then and as I understand it they knew it was important for students to have opportunities to see a tutor face to face and to meet other students, so they organised tutorial systems and summer schools. This isn't just because it's nice to have someone to chat to. It's an essential part of the process of learning and reflecting on what one has learned, and in the process acquiring improved social skills. Essential skills for most jobs, surely?

I can’t access the Daily Telegraph site without a share token, but the topic is also covered in the Cambridge student newspaper Varsity here, with an earlier article here.

All subjects have a QAA benchmark, which indicates the skills that students are supposed to graduate with - i.e. this is not just about subject knowledge but skills, both discipline specific and transferrable.

I've had to have considerable arguments with management to be allowed to deliver what we are legally obliged to (develop students' communication skills, autonomy, group working, open-mindedness) because their inclination is to give students whatever they want.

Sorry, I don't mean legally, but the sector uses these benchmarks as if they were akin to regulatory requirements, and we're held to them in our institutional and course reviews.

Possibly the solution is to record the lectures but also to insist that the student must sign in in person to a certain percentage to be allowed to graduate? Obv with allowances for sickness etc? Then they can catch up on anything they do miss, revisit ones they went to?

and maybe only have them available until the next lecture time so they can’t just leave it all until the end?

Attendance monitoring is problematic - I've never come across a method that's fool proof. Even if you somehow manage to confirm that everyone who registers their attendance is doing so honestly (and not signing in for a friend or using a code they've been sent while lying in bed), you can't monitor who goes to the loo and doesn't come back, or who just turns up at the end if that's when you take attendance. Lectures can have hundreds of students so policing it in the way you can for a seminar or lab just isn't possible. I'm all for attendance monitoring as a nudge to encourage attendance, to monitor engagement over a cohort and to identify students who are in need of support, but linking it to graduation would probably be a step too far.

I guess I'm old fashioned, and think that if you want to hear what was said in class and gain the advantage of your lecturer's discussion then you need to be... in class. I think students are lucky to get lecture slides uploaded advance and indefinitely tbh, I remember everything being done on the board in chalk and it was very much use it or lose it.

Students pay a hefty amount of tuition fees and I often wonder why they don't fully engage in all that's on offer to get value for money

However if you buy a ticket for the theatre and decide not to attend - the theatre management or lead actor don't contact you to ask where you were for the performance? The analogy isn't perfect but demanding adults who are paying customers attend seems a little odd