How Students Consume Online Lectures: Not Everything Needs to be a Video

Abstract

As students and technology change, the way teachers teach must, at least to some extent, change too. One change that is evident in both students and technology is an increase in the use of instructional videos. Traditional-aged college students today have grown up in an age where streaming videos from various formats including free social media and paid formal services have become a standard way to consume information. To that end, there are growing expectations on faculty to meet students where they are and create our own videos for delivering course content. The goal of this study is to examine how effective recorded videos are, in comparison to written lectures, at delivering course content and helping students be successful. Specifically, this study presented students with two different options for receiving lecture content in first- and second-year political science courses at a suburban, midwestern, community college. Students could receive lecture material by either reading lecture notes or by watching videos of the instructor going over the notes–or both. By using both quantitative and qualitative measures, this study examined how students consumed lecture material and compared the differences between their academic outcomes and perceptions of both the course and their instructor.

Keywords:

• Online courses
• course design
• online lectures
• videos
• rapport

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Megan Breit-Goodwin for her support in this research as well as Anoka-Ramsey Community College for creating and maintaining the SoTL program which made this work possible.

Notes

1 Anoka-Ramsey Community College Internal Review Board approval date: December 17, 2019.

2 For a sample of the written notes or recorded videos, please email the author at [email protected]

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Matthew Schuster

Matthew Schuster teaches Political Science at Anoka-Ramsey Community College and Metropolitan State University in Minnesota. He specializes in political theory and American government.