How do students use tutorial recordings and which formats are most effective?

Project leader(s): Cath BrownCatherine OnionsCharlotte Hancox
Theme: Supporting students
Faculty: STEM
Status: Current
Dates: June 2024 to June 2027

Post-pandemic, students’ live attendance at online tutorials has declined significantly but it is not uncommon to see hundreds of views of recordings.

This raises the question of how current tuition provision should be flexed to better address student needs- and to make optimum use of AL time. Recordings are currently regarded as a by-product of a live tutorial, with synchronous delivery the main focus; however, given the prevalence of their use, it is appropriate to examine how the recordings themselves should best be designed to optimise their benefit to students.

This project will focus on MST210, a level 2 Applied Mathematics module with approximately 400 students. The module is largely taken by students on Mathematics or Mathematics and Physics qualifications, so the cohort is relatively homogeneous. The module currently has a tuition strategy in which most events are module-wide and so accessible to the entire cohort, apart from three specific tutor group events (initial introduction and two tutorials relating to a group-work based modelling project). The module-wide events each focus on one or more units of the material, or on aspects of revision, and there is more than one event of each type. The relatively “traditional” approach to tuition on MST210 will enable an analysis of student behaviour and preferences which is not impacted by other innovations.

The principal aim of the project is to ascertain which recording format(s) work best for students with a view to improving the provision. To achieve this, two phases of work will be carried out:-

Phase 1
Obtaining quantitative data on how students have used recordings in the post-pandemic period (21J, 22J, 23J)

The information to be obtained is

For individual recordings:-
- Numbers of views
- Duration of views
- Repeat viewings
- Viewings by students who attended live
Across the module
- Tutorials obtaining the most unique views
- Patterns in students’ use of recordings

Obtaining qualitative data on student preferences (23J)

This will cover:

How students decide which recordings to use
The circumstances in which students use recordings
The purposes of viewing recordings

The outcomes of Phase 1 will inform Phase 2, but the current plan for Phase 2 is to use some AL tuition time to create a variety of recording types for MST210; examples to include “bite size” single idea tutorials, lectures and “workshop” tutorials prompting students to attempt problems during the recording.

Ideally we will have, for example, a given AL doing a conventional recorded live tutorial, a recorded empty room session and bite size sessions on the same topic to enable direct comparison without the AL themselves being a variable

We will analyse then analyse usage of these different types of recording, and obtain further feedback from students by questionnaire on their utility to support their studies, and carry out interviews to obtain more in depth insight.

Recommendations will be made based on these findings, to inform approaches to recordings as part of tuition strategy within the School of Mathematics and Statistics, and across STEM. This work has the potential to feed into decision making in the current work on tuition reform within PVC-Students.

There is the potential for external collaboration in this project since the use of lecture capture versus dedicated recordings is a point for consideration sector-wide; some interest shown from two institutions. The external involvement would take place at the dissemination stage; similarities with the other HEIs would offer the potential for sector-wide recommendations, increasing the external impact of this work.