April 17, 2008
Harvard Survey Shows Undergraduates -- but Not Graduate Students -- Like Video Lectures
A technology report by a Harvard University student shows that of all the digital tools that professors use, Harvard students find most useful online course material and syllabi.
The report said students want courses to have “a Web site that contains readings, notes and other content so they can be accessed easily during the semester,” wrote Anthony A. Pino in a blog post about the report. It is based on responses last December from 328 undergraduates and 120 graduate students.
Students were asked to rate the usefulness of about 16 technologies, including RSS Feeds, wikis, blogs, podcasts, and videos.
One of the most noticeable difference between undergraduates and graduate students was over video lectures. Undergraduates valued them but graduate students worried that undergraduates would use them as a substitute for attendance, wrote Mr. Pino. —Andrea L. Foster
Posted on Thursday April 17, 2008 | Permalink |Comments
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I too I’m concerned that students use video lectures for an excuse not to attend class. Graduate students have learned the importance in being in class, but undergraduates have not.
— BH Apr 18, 10:45 AM #
The headline of this article is not entirely accurate. The study shows that both undergraduates and graduates found recorded lectures useful; but that the recorded lectures had the largest difference in the perception of ‘usefulness’ between undergrads and grads as compared to the other technologies.
Eprojects, class wikis, class blogs, and discussion forums all received lower scores among both groups then did recorded lectures.
In other words, RTFS. :)
— Laura F. Apr 18, 11:41 AM #
Amen, Laura. Further, the study is a good stimulus for discussion of the utility of these tools, but care must be taken to tease out what it means. Very easy to gloss over the meaning of a 3 vs a 4, and whether students have actually been exposed to good examples of some of the newer, lower-rated technologies.
— Joe Apr 18, 02:11 PM #
The obvious question for BH is this: If students learn as much using the video as attending class, why attend the class?
— Aerial Apr 18, 06:47 PM #
Excellent questions all. IF they can learn more off of video or as much there is no reason to attend, but then so what? Learning when and where students want is the point, is it not. Now, I’m doing a podcast survey right now, and really the all audio versus all video are two different animals. I’m astounded by the differences of opinion of students in my survey so far. Some, very obviously dislike podcasts period. I personally listen more often in the mobile phase so prefer audio only. The videos tie people down more and the original idea was to be on the go.
The lecture podcast is probably the worst form of podcasting possible or maybe the least common denominator. I think supplemental podcasts or rather student participant or produced podcasts may show the most benefit and most viewership over the long haul.
— john cummins Apr 18, 09:19 PM #
Video lectures should not be used as a replacement, but should be used in the form of a supplemental material, such as: http://www.ivyvilos.com/content.html
— A. Andaz Ahmad Apr 19, 12:48 AM #
I’m concerned that when students only look at videos of a presentation any interaction is lost. This may impact the student’s ability to understand nonverbal ques of the professor, and in med school leave the task of learning to listen from the patient the first time and reading nonverbal ques out of the training objectives
— Patrick Goff Apr 23, 03:39 PM #