The College of Business Administration (CBA) at the University of Central Florida (UCF) has an enrollment of over 9,000 students, third in the nation among AACSB accredited business schools. High CBA enrollment led to many large class sections, and classroom space is often difficult to acquire. Many of our students are also employed. Thus, the CBA recently chose to deliver many of its lower level undergraduate course sections using lecture capture.
This research examined student performance, withdrawal rates, and perceptions in two sections of an undergraduate Macroeconomics course. One course section was taught in a traditional, face-to-face setting, while the other section employed lecture capture. Both sections were taught by the same instructor, utilized the same course materials and problem sets, and students received the same exams. An online student perceptions survey was provided to students in both sections near the end of each semester.
Lecture capture courses in the CBA are taught in 70 or 280 seat multi-media classrooms. Students are given the option to attend the live section, but previous, in-house research has shown that only about 10% of students regularly attend. The lectures are recorded on video and placed on the course website, which also houses other course information. Students may go to the website and watch the lectures at their convenience. They have unlimited viewing opportunities during the semester, and the videos have standard controls, such as pause, replay, fast forward, varied playback speeds, and students can download the videos to portable devices such as MP3 players. Students in the face-to-face section did not have access to the videos.
Student success and withdrawal data, and student perceptions were collected during the fall 2009 and spring 2010 terms. Success is defined as receiving a grade of "C" or higher in the course, and actual course grades were also compared. Withdrawal frequencies were obtained, excluding those for medical reasons, to determine if lecture capture sections had higher withdrawal rates. Preliminary results indicate that student success and withdrawal rates and study times are comparable across the two delivery modalities. Student perceptions of the lecture capture courses were also quite positive.
Objectives:
The authors will describe the results of research on the effectiveness of lecture capture instruction in an undergraduate Macroeconomics course. The goal of this research is to help improve lecture capture-based instruction, and to add to the state of knowledge in this field.
