Surprising Results from Lecture-Capture Data

E-textbooks. Hybrid and online courses. Using learner analytics to assess experiments that involve academic technology. The future of SmartSite.

These are a few of the areas that David Levin intends to discuss, and address, as director of Academic Technology Services for Information and Educational Technology. Below, you’ll find an excerpt from an interview with Levin. You can also read the full text.

How does the lecture-capture experiment work?

It introduces different tools, so that faculty can experiment, and we can ask ourselves whether this is something we would like to make available to any faculty member who wants to record their lecture in a learning space.

We’re in pilot phase now. Then we will ask different campus groups to see if this is a direction we want to go, based on our early results.

Lecture-capture is a point in a process. It can have great effect on student learning. I’ve seen early results from other places. Some results are surprising.

How so?

One expects lecture-capture to be used, for example, to allow students, who can’t come to class, to participate anyway.

In some experiments, where people have played with a ‘hy-flex’ model of lecture-capture—it’s ‘hybrid’ because it mixes online and in-class experiences, and ‘flexible,’ because students choose which mode to engage.

Many people thought students would either come to class or view the lecture-capture. We certainly had students in those two categories, but some sets of students did both. They came to class, and reviewed the lectures online. In some cases, they outperformed the others.

The results are early, but two distinct sets of students come to class and review the lectures online. One, as you might expect, is the very, very motivated students who want to do absolutely well, and will do everything they can. The other group is non-native speakers of English. They find they can’t do without being there in class, but they do not come out of the class understanding the lecture fully all the time, and so their ability to review the recorded lecture is critical.

Another very interesting result: If you show students, who aren’t necessarily achieving the results they’d like, that other students are increasing their achievement based on some change—in this case by rewinding the lecture, using lecture-capture—then the students who want to do that are likely to follow them.

They’re drawn to the success.

Collecting data for learner analytics can help decision-makers and administrators see what interventions work; it can help faculty see what works; and it can be used by students as ways to motivate themselves.

I imagine you welcome faculty who want to talk with you about all this?

Absolutely.

What’s the best way for them to contact you?

Send me an email (dslevin@ucdavis.edu) or call me (530-752-2133). Even better, as much as I live in the virtual world, I want to get together and talk with you. So, set up an appointment. Drop by.