Abstract:

This paper describes a realist evaluation of the Lecture Capture (LC) initiative at a top 10 University in the UK, for the academic year 2014/15. LC (sometimes referred to as Web Based Lecture Technologies in the literature) is an umbrella term used to describe the capturing of lecture content (video, audio and slides) and is a suite of technologies that include hardware, server software and systems, desktop applications and audio-visual devices.

The evaluation utilised a full set of engagement analytics of LC usage and attendance data across a whole institution for an entire academic year. It also adopted a realist approach to theory building and testing using both implementation data and qualitative data from staff and students. The study involved four cycles of increasingly focused evaluation enquiry in order to illicit what works (and does not work), for whom, in which contexts and the reasons why.

The investigation found that positive viewing outcomes were linked to particular staff attitudes and behaviours and not to specific disciplines, course content, departments or previous experience of using LC. The objective of this paper is to describe the methodology, approach and detailed findings for this part of the investigation.

The Behaviour Change Wheel (Michie, Atkins and West 2014) is a useful tool for designing and classifying behaviour change interventions developed from 19 frameworks of behaviour change. It differentiates between intervention functions, policy categories and target behaviours modelled within capability, opportunity and motivation. The LC initiative under investigation was classified with an intervention function of ‘persuasion’, with a policy category of ‘guidelines’ and target behaviours classified as ‘psychological capability’, ‘social opportunity’ and ‘reflective motivation’. This tool has been used throughout the evaluation and also to provide recommendations for future LC intervention policy.

The staff users, who have consistently high completion and cohort viewing rate across all of their courses, are more likely to come from departments where LC use by staff is firmly embedded in practice or are the first to use LC in their department. These staff are very experienced teachers, who were influenced by students to use LC and continue to use it because of positive feedback from their students. They pro-actively tell their students that the lectures are available online, with instructions on how to access them and regularly check the viewing figures.

Ultimately, staff need to perceive the benefits themselves of using this technology and reflect on their own goals in its use. Gathering feedback from students will help to galvanize their personal opinion on the predominant usefulness of the technology for their discipline, their cohort and their pedagogical style and personal development.

References:
[1] Michie, Susan, Lou Atkins, and Robert West. The Behaviour Change Wheel - A Guide to Designing Interventions. UK: Silverback publishing, 2014.

Keywords:

Lecture Capture, realist evaluation, behaviour, attitudes.