NOVEMBER 2018 IN
RICK ASTER’S WORLD

Video Lectures

Video lectures are more productive than live lectures, at least from the point of view of the student. As the production of video lectures continues to improve, the disparity is becoming so great that video lectures must start to displace live classroom lectures.

The list below presents a few of the ways that video lectures may be a better use of a student’s time and attention.

• Go anywhere. A live lecture requires you to go to a specific room at a specific time. If you are somewhere else, you miss it entirely. A video lecture is available even if you are confined to your bed.
• Clarity. A room large enough to hold dozens of students is one in which sound is murky and electronic visuals, if used, are dim and far away. Words can be misheard and misread. Did the teacher say “azimuth” or “asymptote”? In a lecture hall, it is hard to be sure, but most likely, the difference matters, and it may take only a couple of misheard words for a student to be lost and confused for the rest of the hour. By contrast, a recorded lecture allows the student to set up a high-functioning viewing and listening environment beforehand.
• Global talent. A recorded lecture can be delivered to an unlimited number of students, so it is easier to select a talented lecturer, one who has strong speaking skills and a solid grasp of the subject. A teacher chosen this way can be expected to produce a better result than the teacher who happens to be available in your town.
• Schedule conflicts. Inevitably in college, two of the most important specialized classes are scheduled at the same time, so that the student must choose to learn one topic or the other. Video lectures create the potential to work around these conflicts.
• Editing out mistakes. A lecturer occasionally makes mistakes, then has to backtrack and correct them. From the student’s point of view, this wastes time and adds the confusion of false information. When a lecture is recorded, the mistakes can be edited out, saving time and providing better clarity.
• Editing for rhythm. The same editing process can take out unnecessary pauses, saving time and maintaining momentum. Editing can also add repetition, clarification, and pauses where they can help to reinforce a point.
• Pause and repeat. The student can pause a video playback to allow time for an important point to sink in or to take notes. Another reason a student might pause is to look up an unfamiliar word or idea so that the meaning of the lecture is clearly understood. A student can repeat parts of a lecture to gain a firmer understanding of the way ideas go together. It is easy enough to repeat the entire lecture if necessary. None of this is possible in a live one-time lecture delivery. The ability to pause and repeat prevents a common effect in live lectures, in which a student loses the thread and remains in confusion for several minutes or the rest of the topic, unable to take in the rest of the information after missing or mistaking an essential point that came earlier.
• Discussion. The time saved by using recorded lectures can allow more iime for discussion, which promotes better learning, a sense of mastery, and a sense of shared experience among the students.
• Editorial review. As a rule, live lectures are heard only by the students, so if they contain false or misleading information or confusing presentation, it is up to the students to provide corrections. By contrast, recorded lectures can be reviewed by subject-matter experts who can point out flaws that can then be corrected. In the best case, corrections can be made before the lectures reach the first students. Even if this is not posssible, the corrections are made more quickly than with live lectures.
• Staying up to date. It is easy enough to keep the information in recorded lectures in line with the latest understanding of the subject area, the same way that books are kept up to date. Live lectures present information that is inevitably out of date as it depends almost entirely on a single person, the lecturer, to keep up with the changes in the field.

The cost of recording video lectures is still substantial, so that if a subject area has only a few students, there might not be anyone to make the investment in the recorded lectures. However, once a subject reaches the level of hundreds of students per year seeking to learn the same material, the efficiency gained by the students would seem to be great enough to mandate the use of recorded lectures in place of the most critical live lectures. This will not be a quick transition, but already students are starting to be aware that they are getting a second-rate education if it depends primarily on live, in-person lectures.

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