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Online Learning News and Research
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Saturday, December 08, 2001
http://imej.wfu.edu/articles/2001/2/06/index.asp Digital Lectures: If You Make Them, Will Students Use Them? Constraints on Effective Delivery of Flexible Learning Systems Tim Bell, University of Canterbury; Andy Cockburn, University of Canterbury; Bruce McKenzie, University of Canterbury; John Vargo, University of Canterbury Abstract Preparing courses for flexible delivery and distance education is normally a time-consuming and expensive process. This paper describes the design and evaluation of a system that automatically captures and indexes audio and video streams of traditional university lectures without demanding any changes in the style or tools used by teachers. Using a wizard-of-oz technique to simulate the automatic indexing, we ran a four-month trial of the system in a large (746 students) first year Computer Studies course. The results reveal some surprising social implications about making flexible delivery available to students at a residential university. Early in the trial, many students expressed an intention to use the system, but few did. Late in the course, many students stated that they urgently needed the system for revision, but even fewer used it. At the same time, lecture attendance appeared to be lower than normal. We hypothesise that the availability of a flexible alternative to lectures removed the necessity of attending lectures, and that students deceived themselves about their intentions to catch up using the digital medium. A survey of students was conducted to discover the reasons for non-use. Results of that survey showed that other time pressures and logistics problems hampered usage. Recommendations for addressing such challenges are included....
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