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Podcasts of University Lectures?
theslashdot asks: "I'm working at a major university in the US, and have been charged with posting pod-casts of class lectures on the internet. The problem is whether or not posting the videos would allow students to skip class and just download the lecture, instead. I guess the problem is trying to strike the right balance between allowing good students to take advantage of this resource, but discourage bad students from staying at home all the time and watching all the lectures right before the exam. So what methods can be used to provide these pod-casts for the students who actually attended class? In terms of when the lecture should be posted, what would be a good time-frame? Immediately after the class? 24 hours? One week? One class behind schedule?"
"In terms of trying to prevent this, here are some possible solutions I've come up with:
- Post the lecture with authentication based on the class list for those enrolled in the course, although this would not really discourage truancy.
- Post the lecture with authentication based on those who attended the class (student cards would have to be barcode-scanned at the beginning of class); this would prevent those who missed the class from downloading the lecture, but presumably they could receive a copy from a student who did attend the class. Additionally it would create a major hassle for all students to ensure that their attendance is registered.
- Post the lecture with a single password that the professor distributes to the class during the lecture. This would discourage students from missing the lecture, but likely those students missing class could simply obtain the password from another student who did attend the class."
- Post the lecture with authentication based on the class list for those enrolled in the course, although this would not really discourage truancy.
- Post the lecture with authentication based on those who attended the class (student cards would have to be barcode-scanned at the beginning of class); this would prevent those who missed the class from downloading the lecture, but presumably they could receive a copy from a student who did attend the class. Additionally it would create a major hassle for all students to ensure that their attendance is registered.
- Post the lecture with a single password that the professor distributes to the class during the lecture. This would discourage students from missing the lecture, but likely those students missing class could simply obtain the password from another student who did attend the class."
I don't really see why you're worried about discouraging truancy. Most students will probably desire to attend the class anyway, if nothing else for the social aspect. MIT posts videos of all their lectures (or is trying to get to that point, I'm not sure how far they are) and I don't see them having any problems.
Another thing, I suspect this would be beneficial to some students who, like me, are not morning people. If I have to drag my ass out the door for an 8:00 class there's a good chance I'm not going to be paying much attention to the lecture. If a student chooses to defer his viewing of the lecture to a time when he's actually awake I don't see why he shouldn't be allowed to do so.
I've taught at the undergraduate & graduate levels before (C/C++/Data Structures, etc). Here's some simple simple ideas
- base a portion of the grade on attendance
- display some information just outside of the view of the podcast (ex: most cameras are stationary and don't cover the whole room) and make sure that info is on the exam
- weekly quizes that force them to attend
I work at a large private university in Washington, DC, and we currently post some class lectures online, although only at the professor's request. There were, of course, concerns about students skipping, but so far, after a year, it really hasn't been an issue. Most of the classes have attendance policies, and the students still have to obey those. The students seem to appreciate having access to the older class lectures around finals, and in a format they can use while doing other things.
Personally, I think if the students want to pay to not to attend class, then that's their right. If it hurts their education, they're only hurting themselves.
My university, the University of Canberra (Australia) already does this for a number of classes. Some are video taped and others are audio taped, both of which are then distributed online in the same week as the lecture. At my last university - the Australian National University - *all* of my lectures were audio taped and the tapes made available in the library the same week as the lecture.
I don't understand why a university would demand that its students attend every lecture? Here in Australia a significant proportion of students also work casually or part-time to support their education. Others work full-time and attend university part-time. Others have family commitments. Distributing taped copies of lectures online (or at least in the library) simply facilitates learning for these individuals who have as much of a right to attend university as anyone else. Certainly this results in some individuals skipping lectures because they can watch them online, but how is that actually a problem? Those individuals are still required to complete all the assessment items and exams in order to pass, and if they're able to do that, they've obviously learned as much as the students that attend lectures. IMO, universities should embrace the technologies available to them and I'm glad mine does.
Depending on class size, the deterrent is already built in.
Small Classes - If they skip, the students will not be able to ask the professor questions. A podcast is just not the same.
Big Classes - What, then is the difference? Students can rarely ask questions or interact with the professor anyway.
If you really need a deterrent, make attendance affect their grade slightly. Like 5-10%. Allow 3 or 4 free classes free a semester.
If the professor/school wants attendance, you really need to build it into policy. Not encumber the technical solution with so much baggage as to make it too much hassle to use. That's counterproductive.
I had a professor that recorded and uploaded every one of his lectures online as well as all of the notes. Lectures were posted immediately after class; notes were posted weeks in advance. It was great for days when I felt like crap and didn't feel that I could make it to class. Also, this class was at 12pm, so sometimes I would skip the class to do some last minute studying for an exam at 2pm.
The lectures were placed into a website whose access was restricted and only students taking the class could access it.
Everyone appreciated being able to download the lectures, not only for the reason of being unable to show up (or in some cases, just not feeling like it) but also to play back a specific point that we missed so that we could clarify it in our own notes.
If you're going to skip class and download the lecture later, then you're still going to end up sitting down, downloading the file, listening to an hour long lecture while taking notes on it. So if you really care about your grade, what's the point of skipping and downloading the lecture later? It's more convenient to just show up to class (or if you don't care about your grade, not show up to class and not download the lecture). It doesn't make sense to label this as a temptation to skip class.
Also, if you use diagrams then audio lectures alone will be of limited help. Granted, the class I took was anatomy, so this point depends on the class I guess.
Finally, unless the class is really easy (or the student is very smart), I doubt that anyone can just sit through 15 hours of continuous lecture and still ace an exam right after.
You're working on a system to benefit the students. Your main target group is the group that actually attends most of their classes. If you provide a stripped down version to minimize the benefit to the group that is generally truant, you are minimizing the benefit to the students that attend.
You state that you are worried about whether or not your endeavour will encourage students to become more truant and use the tools to study the night before the exam. Students who are apt to do this will do so regardless of whether or not your project ever comes to fruition. They'll also learn the hard way that their marks suffer from this, and having 200hours worth of video files to sift through in the 12-24 hours of cram time before a final will likely hurt them more than help them. The students who attended class might want to use the full footage to find something they're not too solid on. So posting the full sound/video package will likely not benefit the non-attenders, but could heavily benefit the attenders.
As I mentioned though, non-attenders are likely to skip anyway, though you are right, their truancy might increase slightly... I highly doubt the trend would last more than a semester or two, as people will learn the hard way that attending class does, in fact, help your marks... unless of course you can't understand the prof at all. I had one who was completely unintelligible, and used only u,v and x as variables... the problem was his u's, v's and x's all looked exactly identical in his chicken-scratched blackboard-scrawls. I didn't much attend that class, and an audio/video stream likely wouldn't have helped anyway ;-)
My suggestion: Go with the full meal deal and make it as accessible as possible. Allow it outside even (provided you guys have the bandwidth.) Prospective students will use it to see what the profs are like, which may be a good or bad thing for you? As well, non-students will be able to use it to brush up on skills. As to the poster previously who said that this last might hurt the university, I'd like to know how? These non-students would either be in a position where they will never be able to go to a university (in which case the university has lost nothing) or they would be in a position to go to a university (in which case they'll need to actually enrol in order to get a diploma) and they'll have gained a certain amount of respect for a university that makes it's courses freely available. As well, in both cases, these people would likely refer others to this university if they're learning from these audio/video files.
Oh god, that woman is John Romero!
No kidding... that was my first impression upon reading the summary. Why would any university want to babysit its students? When you're a child they take your attendance. In high school, they generally expect you to be there but don't make too huge of a fuss if you're not. And in university, you're the one paying the bills so if you choose not to take advantage of the lectures and you still learn the material enough to meet the course requirements, then why babysit your customers?
Part of the university experience is learning the balance between freedom (not going to class and doing what you want) and responsibility (attending class because you'll usually learn more that way). Remove that freedom and you're just preparing a generation of mindless workers who will be unable to cope unless some manager is watching them punching in and out with their timecards.
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
This is college. If a student wishes to not attend class that is THEIR choice. If they can successfully cram before the exam then this is the professors problem.
Honestly, you should want students who miss class (there are legitimate reasons for this) the be able to get as much as possible if they are willing to put in the time.
Why do you feel that there is value to the university in students being in the classroom? If you could successfully provide learning media which was not geographicly restricted, that seems like a good thing.
Perhaps I could put this another way. The point of college is to learn, right? So if the student passes the exam, that should mean that they have learned enough about that subject. How they learn it is not as important. If the method really is important to you, force some freshman classes to be taken which do not have alternative resources (such as the pod cast).
-Tim Louden
"Let me ask the reverse question: why would you not come to lectures at the scheduled times? You're in school, you're paying good money for it, the curriculum is designed to enable you to take the courses without conflicts, and the courses are designed for steady, regular attendence. What earthly reason would there be to skip classes except in cases of dire emergency?"
Let me give you a few examples because I've run into these situations.
Currently those who miss the class can get notes from other students anyway. Those students who do not attend lectures are either brilliant and can research the material in their own way, or they are going to fail. Any student who believes they can rely on notes from someone else will most likely fail. Same deal for video lectures.
I'd love to have my old Engineering lectures in a video format on my server at home. Sometimes I think it would be faster/better to lookup a video lecture about X because I can locate that info faster than by picking up a book. Some of those lectures I had to attend were so packed full of information it was sometimes difficult to absorb everything in a short timefrome. While I know that a certain theory exists, I don't always know what it was called, however, I *can* recall the lecture and who gave it.
My suggestion is to edit out 5 minutes of the lecture and this 5 minutes must contain an exam hint or extra piece of info. Those who miss the lecture will really miss out. Thats a definate reason to attend. Don't tell any of them what is going to be left out... Sure they can get the info from their friends, but 5 minutes from a 50 minute lecture is 10% and if that 10% contains exam hints, then that 10% is really worth a lot more.
How many of their friends are gonna sit down and work out exactly which 5 minutes has been edited out, especially if you put jumps and stutters into the video. Walk from one side of the hall and back again all the time while looking into space, act like you are in deep thought. These are good points to edit in and out.
You could always take role call several times a semester and fail those who attend less than 60% of classes. Same sort of maths involved in this as with the rejection of mass produced items... statistics... second year, subject = KME271, oh, damn, I wish I had that video lecture
Does it go on forever?
While I tend to agree with the general idea of your post, it's important to realize there are different types of "content" and different types of students.
Some different types of content:
Some types of students (not mutually exclusive):
Many if not most students will be aware of some, but not all of the factors influencing their learning.
What it boils down to is: (Most) lectures really are an important service, even if many students don't actually need them at all. Some students would downright fail if they would not be forced to attend lectures, or at least take frequent tests. It's not easy to strike a balance, here, but here are some guidelines I just made up:
For a non-student who has a long commute and an interest in several subjects, are there any teachers who have the "Information wants to be free" attitude and make podcasts of their own lectures available to non-students?
I know, this means the professor is giving away an intellectual property for free, but some people are ok with the idea.
I've heard of professors (one that quickly comes to mind is Alexander Shulgin, because I've read his books) that would make a syllabus which said which parts of the books to read, and then not talk a bit about them during the class lecture. Instead, they would cover other things which weren't in the book, sometimes go more in depth about certain subjects which were only briefly covered in the texts, and sometimes just go off on tangents of their own which were related to the field, but wouldn't be covered in any text. The only thing that allowed him [Shulgin, in this case] to do this was the students actually having to have read the text, because if they were to go to the lecture without the background in the book, they would be completely lost.
I think this is an excellent method of teaching (though it may not seem like it, especially to people who hate reading textbooks). The lecture wouldn't just be a rehashing of the assigned reading - it would be a complete departure from it. One would have to familiarize themselves with the textbook topic, or the in-depth coverage would be meaningless to them. Not only does it encourage reading of the assigned materials, it also encourages students to come in to class, if just to find out what their professor was going to chat about that day. This may only be feasable in classes with somewhat interesting topics (or to students somewhat interested in the topic, regardless of its general interest), but I think that even if you're just going for the credits you would have far more incentive to attend lectures as well as read the texts if it wasn't the same material you had just read being covered again.