Journal of Academic Development and Education JADE Issue 10 | Page 106

106 | JADE
HIGHLIGHT #2 | 107
LAURA M. HANCOCK, GRAEME R. JONES, & DANIELA PLANA
LECTURE HIGHLIGHTS: REPURPOSING LECTURE CAPTURE
TO PROVIDE LEARNING RESOURCES FOR LEVEL 6 CHEMISTRY STUDENTS
“Didn't know they were available/where they were. Sound quite useful.”
Chemistry Student
“I wasn't aware they were available for anything other than Laura's stuff”
Chemistry Student
When asked about whether the various resources were used,
23 to 50% of students reported using them in various topics. To
contextualise this, lecture capture and screencasts have been used
extensively in chemistry at Keele for a number of years and previous
studies show that the majority of students use them, preferring short
videos on single topics.[8] In particular, 80% of third year chemistry
students in the 2014–2015 academic year used recordings, when
available, for example.[8] This would have led us to anticipate a high
uptake of Lecture Highlights by the students. To look at this in a
little more detail, usage only by students who were aware of the
availability of Lecture Highlights was extracted, showing that over
two thirds of these students did in fact use them, i.e. the majority of
students who knew about the resources used them. This highlights
the importance of signposting of available learning resources to
students and the necessity of proper guidance on their use.
Figure 1: Reported use of Lecture Highlights by students, on average and
separating the two cohorts.
Students reported a variety of uses for Lecture Highlights as
learning resources, as shown in Figure 1. Most students used them
for revision before exams, although a significant number used them
for clarification after lectures and/or as aid in doing associated
coursework; this last category was particularly prevalent amongst
the Joint cohort. Overall, there was more familiarity with the
resources by the students on the joint programme when compared
to the Keele cohort (>25% difference), which translated into higher
usage of the Lecture Highlights by the Joint cohort. This can be
explained in two ways: the need of the Joint cohort to review or
learn more about aspects of chemistry covered in previous years or
better signposting by staff members to the Joint cohort compared
to the Keele cohort; it was, after all, part of the aim of the project to
produce resources which would help minimise differences in prior
learning experiences.
A large majority of the students (>70%) stated that they found
Lecture Highlights generally useful, and provided various reasons for
this, as shown by selected quotes:
“They are useful to find quick information on something”
Chemistry Student
“I think more people should do them … as pre-session work”
Chemistry Student
Figure 2: Percentage of students that found captions useful. The percentage
of students who reported not being native English speakers is also shown
for comparison.