I’m not too surprised. The value of a live instructor is interaction. If you have a lively Socratic discussion in class, students would probably learn a lot in class but not get much out of it from a recording. But if you’re just going to be a talking head, might as well make a quality recording and let students press pause.
(I overstate my case. Even an uninterrupted lecture can still have a subtle form of interaction, reacting to non-verbal feedback from students.)
I personally don’t see the point of attending lectures without the possibility of interaction–ideally with both the lecturer and fellow attendees. For that matter, I usually prefer reading text to listening to it. I skipped a significant fraction of lectures in college.
That said, I know many people who prefer to learn by listening to lectures–and prefer to do so live. And I do enjoy live presentations from passionate speakers–passion is something that is often diluted by other forms of communication. I never missed a lecture from the late Gian-Carlo Rota if I could help it.
Good lectures are as much about theater as about content.
It would be interesting to see how a third group did — those that went to the lecture and had access to the recording to review/reinforce what they heard.
Thinking back to my own ugrad career, one function that attending lectures really helped with was keeping a good pace throughout the term, not letting stuff pile up .
I’m not too surprised. The value of a live instructor is interaction. If you have a lively Socratic discussion in class, students would probably learn a lot in class but not get much out of it from a recording. But if you’re just going to be a talking head, might as well make a quality recording and let students press pause.
(I overstate my case. Even an uninterrupted lecture can still have a subtle form of interaction, reacting to non-verbal feedback from students.)
I personally don’t see the point of attending lectures without the possibility of interaction–ideally with both the lecturer and fellow attendees. For that matter, I usually prefer reading text to listening to it. I skipped a significant fraction of lectures in college.
That said, I know many people who prefer to learn by listening to lectures–and prefer to do so live. And I do enjoy live presentations from passionate speakers–passion is something that is often diluted by other forms of communication. I never missed a lecture from the late Gian-Carlo Rota if I could help it.
Good lectures are as much about theater as about content.
It would be interesting to see how a third group did — those that went to the lecture and had access to the recording to review/reinforce what they heard.
Thinking back to my own ugrad career, one function that attending lectures really helped with was keeping a good pace throughout the term, not letting stuff pile up .