17 October, 2005

Audio Development Project: Attendance Issues

At the SOLSTICE launch last Thursday, there seemed to be a real interest in some of the work that has been done online, from video and audio materials to the online skills audit and training.

Talking to people about audio recording of lectures, the whole issue of whether students will continue to turn up for lectures is brought up.

This recent document entitled 'Audio Recording of Lectures' details research done at Oxford University. Here the lecturer sees no noticable drop in attendance after recordings were made available. Does anyone know of other research?

Also interesting are student comments at the end of the above document. They see recordings as useful for revision or when missing a lecture is unavoidable. The value of personal contact in a face-to-face lecture is also noted. One student notes that the needs of hard-of-hearing students will have to be met in another way (eg. transcripts of lectures).

1 comment:

Rob said...

Interesting stuff. I think the more committed students will see the audio version of the lecture as an additional aid for revision and support when writing assignments. I hope so, anyway...