TELic: A blog about Technology Enhanced Learning

The Student View of Blended Learning

This is the title of a report comissioned by Echo360, who produce one of the leading lecture capture systems used in Higher Education. It details the results of a survey of 1746 students from 16 US and one UK institution (Nottingham), of whom 1566 used recorded lectures as part of a blended learning approach.

Students were asked to choose their top three benefits of recorded lectures, and the results mirrored those from other studies: reviewing material from class, preparing for exams, clarifying confusing topics and supporting independent learning. This isn’t the whole story though, as 41 students used them to help them manage a disability or medical condition, and 24 to cope with language differences.

More controversially, 320 students (20%) picked ‘substituting attending class’ as one of their top three benefits. While some of those are associated with unavoidable absence (illness etc.) 13% of students missed five or more classes, with 95% of those said they used lecture recordings to catch up.

The most unexpected result of the survey (but good for companies like Echo360 and Panopto) is that 67% of ‘high-usage’ students and 44% of all students ranked ‘lecture capture’ as a “very important” learning resource with the next highest being 46%/38% for ‘course management system’ (e.g. Blackboard). Finally, 84% of the students said ‘yes’ when asked “Would you like to see lecture capture in more of your courses?”.

You can download the full report (14 pages) from the Echo360 website.