Lecture-recording technology in higher education: Exploring lecturer and student views across the disciplines

Abstract

This paper presents findings of an institutional case study investigating how students and lecturers experienced a new opt-out, fully integrated lecture-recording system which enabled audio and presentation screen capture. The study's focus is on how 'traditional' students (generally characterised as young, enrolled full-time and attending classes on campus) engaged with lecture-recording and how lecturers' experiences with, and attitudes towards, lecture-recording differed depending on their discipline. Students were generally positive about the affordances of the lecture-recording system, whilst lecturers remained undecided on its value. Discipline-based differences in lecturer engagement with the system were noted between lecturers teaching engineering and sciences subjects and those teaching business and social sciences, the latter being more positive towards the system. The paper raises questions about the efficacy of a one-size-fits-all lecture-recording system given differences in disciplinary activities, lecturer styles and approaches to teaching.