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."

Comments

Why?

[MadUndergrad]

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.

Re:Just release them

[rolfwind]

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.

Re:that's not the point

[badboysdriveaudi]

"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.

1. You'd rather have Professor A than Professor B, but if you sign up for Professor A, the class time conflicts with another class you'd like to attend. This has happened to me numerous times.
2. You'd like to take a class (regardless of whether you like the professor or not), but can't do so because you also have to work to pay the bills. If I could get the lesson on video and watch after I get home from work, that would be awesome! Yes, this has happened to me as well, so I ultimately had to work less because I couldn't trade hours. Those semesters sucked because I basically scrapped by on peanuts. It would have been better if I had a choice.

Re:Why does it matter if they come to class?

[tfried]

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:

• stuff that is readily available in well written textbooks
• stuff that is spread out across different textbooks and scientific articles, so it is useful to summarize it in one good lecture
• stuff that is so advanced or difficult or controversial that it seems very important to debate it and its implications
• finally learning to collaborate with different people on a project/task/subject is a very important part of a truely useful education

Some types of students (not mutually exclusive):

• students who learn really well from textbooks
• students who learn much better, if the very same text is read to them aloud by a living human being
• students who learn from asking questions
• students who learn form answering questions
• students who learn from explaining something to other students
• students who are able to motivate themselves efficiently, and learn on their own over long periods of time
• students who need to be pushed every once in a while or even frequently in order to get something done (these may not make the top-notch employees later, but there's no reason to drop them altogether)

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:

• If the lecture has more than 50 students, regularily, there will never be meaningful interaction on a high level. Provide the podcasts right away, and don't force attendance. Rather provide voluntary weekly quizzes, and mandatory monthly (small) tests. This way you ensure some pressure on students who need it, but leave at least some freedom to the others
• If the lecture has more than 20 but less than 50 students, ask yourself honestly, what type of content you're trying to teach. Is social interaction an important goal of teaching? If so, read below, else follow the instructions above
• For small lectures, you'll probably want to encourage interaction as much as possible. Depending on the type of content this may be encouraging discussion, encouraging students to teach each other, or designing practical tasks the students can work on to solve (instead of just telling them the theory). You'll try not to guide too much, even let your students venture down dead ends sometimes, just to show them where that would lead, and teaching them to recognize it. Providing a podcast of such a lecture may be useful but probably isn't. Requiring attendance is probably useful.
• Don't use mere size of the lecture as the only criterion, but consider your goals for the lecture, and what you know about your students. Judging a lecture by its size is a useful initial heuristic, however.

Re:Why does it matter if they come to class?

[xsonofagunx]

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.