Thursday, 16 May 2019

The merits of lecture capture



Universities are currently introducing ‘lecture capture’ – lectures will be recorded and made available to those unable to attend or who may want to review the class.

It has been met with a high degree of criticism from staff. Many fear that attendance will fall – students will stay at home and watch the video. Most of us know that a good lecture ideally involves ‘being there’ – the chance to engage with the lecturer and with other students during and perhaps after the class. It is about being an active part of an academic community, rather than an adjunct to it.

Many classes are flexible, involving lecturing alongside questions and discussion. Granted, this is very difficult given the large lecture sizes that many deal with. Nonetheless, the flexibility to teach as one sees fit is very important. It would be a backwards step if lecturers felt constrained in any way by the technology.

Yet the right for students to not be recorded is a part of the policies that are being introduced. Muting individuals within a class at their request is awkward. Will some students simply stay quiet?
Will a lecturer feel as free to broach a controversial topic? Will they be prepared to go out on a limb and present a new argument considered left (or right) field? Will they be prepared to deviate from the schedule when they might otherwise feel it is justified by current events to do so? Will they feel brave enough to simply to turn off the lecture slides and run some key issues raised by the class?

Having spoken to many staff about this – partly in my role as a union representative and partly out of professional interest – the majority of staff admit that they will change the way they teach.
Whilst the problems are real, they do not lie with lecture capture. The real issue, and culprit, is university culture itself. The consumer model of education now prevalent promotes two things that are likely in practice to encourage lecturers to adapt when using the technology.

First, lectures have increasingly become part of a formal ‘delivery’ of an academic ‘service’ tied in to a pseudo contractual relationship between fee paying ‘consumers’ and their ‘providers’. The language of ‘learning outcomes’ that are in some cases compulsory and ‘mapped’ to specific classes and assessments doesn’t help. Students are socialised into seeing higher education as an overly formal ‘delivered’ product with clear specifications.

Second, and also a part of the consumer model, universities are no longer spaces where free thought and free speech are guaranteed. The wider political climate in which disagreeable ideas and words are sometimes associated with offence and psychological damage is manifest in numerous speech codes, codes of conduct and zero tolerance policies. The existence of such policies – whilst they are seldom invoked – may make lecturers think twice before repeating a personal anecdote that illustrates a point, stating a strong view they hold or cracking a slightly risqué joke. Issues related to trans rights, religion and #metoo are amongst those where strong opinions or certain words can be taken as a breach of university policy, even when no law has been broken and when there is no intent to cause offense. Hence a growth of self censorship and a certain conservatism in the classroom are likely outcomes when lectures are captured.

There is much to be said for treating the lecture and seminar space as a sacred space for the lecturer and his or her students, one where a lecturer can cultivate an intellectual relationship with students, defined by mutual trust and openness. Ideally, staff should feel confident to play devil’s advocate, to change tac and to use humour as they see fit. The lecture room should be their space, where they can exercise their autonomy in imparting knowledge and in which they can hone their craft.

Hence that universities don’t provide guarantees that captured lectures can’t be invoked in student complaints or disciplinary proceedings is a problem. The argument that they will more likely provide evidence in favour of a lecturer subject to an accusation does not reassure. The issue is the importance of trust in the lecture room, a trust that is already undermined by the twin assumptions that education is the ‘delivery’ of ‘learning outcomes’ and that staff and student codes of conduct are in fact needed to mediate the lecture room and the university as a whole.

So the issue is not lecture capture, but the conservatism that is encouraged through our consumerist and therapeutic model of education. In order to get the most from lecture capture, we need to refound the lecture itself as an arena for the cultivation of knowledge rather than simply its delivery, and as a sacred space where trust rules over fear.

Jim Butcher

This blog also features on the Times Higher blogs: https://www.timeshighereducation.com/blog/lecture-capture-risks-breaking-sacred-trust-lecture-hall