The Relationships between Lecture Attendance or Accessing Lecture Recordings and Academic Outcomes: Results from a Pharmacology Course in a Biomedical Science Degree

Abstract

The effect of lecture recordings on academic outcomes is not clear, and it is not known whether lecture recordings alter the association between attending lectures and academic outcomes. In a third-year pharmacology course, 39 of 42 students consented to the study. Sixty percent of the students attended the first lecture monitored, and then lecture attendance declined to an average of 41%/lecture. The final marks were significantly higher for students who attended ≥ 50% than those who attended < 50% of lectures. There was a weak positive association between lecture attendance and the final course mark in pharmacology. Thirteen of the 39 students did not access any lecture recordings, and an additional 10 students did not access any lecture recordings to ≥ 60% completion. For the 26 students who accessed the lecture recordings, there was a weak negative association between number of lectures accessed to ≥ 80% completion and final mark, but no correlation when the one student who failed the course was removed from the analysis. From this study, it does not seem that lecture recordings can be used as an effective replacement of face-to-face lectures. As lecture recordings were accessed more by the students who subsequently had poorer outcomes, it is possible that they would have had even poorer outcomes without this access.