Abstract:

INTRODUCTION
Since 2010 lecture recordings (electronic lectures, in short electures) are produced on large scale at the University of Frankfurt. Today, there are over 50 lectures recorded each week. The advantages and disadvantages of electures cause significant discussions among university staff members. Besides this discussion students who can already use electures strongly ask for more recorded lectures. In order to get a more profound insight into the usage and perception of electures at our university, we conducted a survey covering students’ and teachers’ interest, usage and option about this media format. In this paper, the results of the empirical study are presented which were also used as a basis for decisions concerning the future extent of lecture recordings at our university and resources made available for this. In the study we focus on the question of how and why students and teachers use lecture recordings. What are the motivation, experience and feedback of students and lecturers? Are there any changes in the students’ learning behaviour or in the lecturers’ presentation style? How many students do not visit the live presentation, if there is the possibility to use recorded lectures? Do they avoid active participation, because of the video camera? Do students stop writing notes? And the general question: What are the main added values of electures as a supplement to the live presentation? There are some publications, which point out advantages of lecture recordings (e.g. Schwill & Apostolopoulos, 2009), but empirical studies on these questions are still rare and have comparatively small samples.

METHOD
We explore students’ and lecturers’ behaviour and preferences by the results of two detailed questionnaires, one for lecturer, and one for students and by log file analysis.

RESULTS
Overall, 1.183 students and 20 lecturers completed a questionnaire. As the results show, it is possible to identify added values of electures within distinct user scenarios. Within qualitative statements many students note that the possibility to review lectures is a particular strength of electures. They also stress on the possibility to use electures flexible in terms of time and location and point out the great possibility to catch up on in different situations such as illness, motherhood, burden caused by sideline employment, overlapping courses etc.. High ratings of electures in context of better learning results can be explained by different statements: Students who feel disturbed during the live lectures and who have difficulties to concentrate, who have language problems, or who point out that the pace of the course is not appropriate state, that their learning outcome is better using the electures instead of visiting the live presentation.
But overall, only 14 percent of the students reduce their presence time significantly because of the possibility to work with the electures. Furthermore, there are significant differences(a multiple analysis of variance was conducted) between subtypes of electure-users (intensive-, regular-, occasional and non-users). Different user-subtypes also think different about electures as a real alternative for live lecture and the quality of teaching is also perceived differently.

CONCLUSION
Different types of user and study conditions bring us to the conclusion, that electures are a very good supplement to live presentations, but they should not replace them.

Keywords:

Electure, lecture recording, empirical study, evaluation.