The Relationships between Lecture Attendance or Accessing Lecture Recordings and Academic Outcomes: Results from a Pharmacology Course in a Biomedical Science Degree

Abstract

The effect of lecture recordings on academic outcomes is not clear, and it is not known whether lecture recordings alter the association between attending lectures and academic outcomes. In a third-year pharmacology course, 39 of 42 students consented to the study. Sixty percent of the students attended the first lecture monitored, and then lecture attendance declined to an average of 41%/lecture. The final marks were significantly higher for students who attended ≥ 50% than those who attended < 50% of lectures. There was a weak positive association between lecture attendance and the final course mark in pharmacology. Thirteen of the 39 students did not access any lecture recordings, and an additional 10 students did not access any lecture recordings to ≥ 60% completion. For the 26 students who accessed the lecture recordings, there was a weak negative association between number of lectures accessed to ≥ 80% completion and final mark, but no correlation when the one student who failed the course was removed from the analysis. From this study, it does not seem that lecture recordings can be used as an effective replacement of face-to-face lectures. As lecture recordings were accessed more by the students who subsequently had poorer outcomes, it is possible that they would have had even poorer outcomes without this access.

Quantitative study showing how and why students access lecture recordings, and of the association between accessing and academic outcomes, in a biochemistry course

“…Thus, most previous studies of students of the biological sciences have shown no association between accessing lecture recordings and academic performance 6,9,[12][13][14][15]19,20 or a negative association. 7,16,17,20,21 One possible reason for the difference between our finding of a weak and previous findings of no or negative associations between accessing lecture recordings and academic outcomes is that we are studying students undertaking a biochemistry course, and such students have not been studied previously. The biochemistry students were made up of students in four programs, two of which have been studied previously; pharmacy and medical laboratory science program students.…”

“…A previous study has shown that a failing student can skew the regression line analysis and association between lecture attendance and academic outcome in a cohort of 39 students. 17 Thus, the regression analysis of accessing lecture recordings and academic outcomes was undertaken in two ways for the entire cohort (1) including all students who accessed lecture recordings and (2) limited to students who accessed and passed the course. For the smaller program cohorts, the regression line analysis was limited to students who accessed and passed the course.…”

An association between accessing lecture recordings, but not lecture attendance, and overall marks for optometry students in a pharmacology course

“…The difference between this and previous studies is unlikely to be due to the discipline being studied as the optometry students were studying pharmacology. A previous study of biomedical science students studying pharmacology showed no association between accessing lecture recordings and academic outcomes, when failing students were removed from the analysis [25], as was done in the present study.…”

“…Regression line analysis of grades and marks versus lecture attendance showed no associations (Table 2). As a previous study had shown that a failing student can skew the regression line analysis and association between lecture attendance [25], the analysis was repeated without the failing student, and this analysis also showed no association between lecture attendance and academic outcomes (data not shown).…”

“…Most studies have shown no association between accessing lecture recordings and academic performance [11,15,16,[19][20][21][22]. Other studies have shown that the use of lecture recordings to be negatively [17,[23][24][25] or positively [19] associated with academic outcomes.…”