Are online lectures actually benefiting students?

In this project, I’m aiming to find out if the introduction of online lectures is enhancing our learning or taking away from it.

I’m going to do this by analysing journal articles, blog posts and interviewing students about whether online lectures are effective towards their learning.

Finding this out is significant to students because we are becoming more dependent on technology than ever before.

Finding this out is significant to UOW because the University places a large importance on technology as a learning tool but could it be doing more harm than good for students.

The on campus experience is highly romanticised especially when deprived of on campus learning due to the covid-19 pandemic. However, it is not completely back to normal for many students. Online learning has become a permanent aspect of the University experience, with lectures being online instead of in person as they were prior to covid. To explore this idea further I reached out to the BCM212 community to take part in a poll to determine if others struggle with lectures being online.

An article from The Conversation challenges how the campus experience is changing, with the introduction of online learning platforms such as echo360 and zoom. These online platforms provide high levels of flexibility for students learning online due to working hours or live further away and have to commute. The article A Class of One explores this new found flexibility to learn where and when best suits them. This then contrasts with the concept that students require monitoring in order to learn more effectively. As lectures are still online, students are able to surf the web online and perform other activities leaving the online lecture on as background noise as there is no in person supervision. Due to this, articles suggest that students need more face to face learning and not less which has resulted in more people dropping out of university and a decline in overall performance.

Zoom has taken the world by storm since covid began, and with it has brought its own issues. The lectures at universities remaining online, either pre-recorded or recorded live, students have been faced with many new decisions. Real Life Mag introduces a new idea referred to as the “zoom gaze”. This highlights how we are now able to watch ourselves communicating, heightening our self awareness and self-correction. Instead of focusing on the content being presented to us we can be distracted, critiquing ourselves or zoning out from zoom fatigue which occurs during our online lectures.

The topic of online lectures is highly relevant now more than ever as we try to gain a sense of normality with being at University and having the experience many of our parents like to refer to as “the best time of your life”. As we struggle to get the most out of our time at University and enjoy being on campus for tutorials, we are still being asked to learn the majority of the content online. This topic is time friendly and achievable due to the amount of information available in blogs, academic articles and I have access to BCM212 students through my tutorials and wider #BCM212 twitter community. I am looking forward to diving deeper into this and getting a better understanding where other BCMs students head’s are at.

References

Caines, A., 2020. The Zoom Gaze. [online] Real Life. Available at: <https://reallifemag.com/the-zoom-gaze/> [Accessed 19 March 2022].

Landrum, B., 2020. A class of one: Students’ satisfaction with online learning. [online] Taylor & Francis Online. Available at: <https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/08832323.2020.1757592> [Accessed 23 March 2022].

Lodge, J., Sobel-Logeski, K. and Ashwin, P., 2017. The campus experience is changing all over the world. [online] The Conversation. Available at: <https://theconversation.com/the-campus-experience-is-changing-all-over-the-world-46866> [Accessed 20 March 2022].

Lodge Research Fellow, J.M., Sobel-Lojeski Assistant Professor, K. & Ashwin Professor of

Higher Education, P., 2021. The campus experience is changing all over the world. The Conversation. Available at: https://theconversation.com/the-campus-experience-is-changing-all-over-the-world-46866 [Accessed March 22, 2022].

Sander, E. and Baumann, O., 2020. 5 reasons why Zoom meetings are so exhausting. [online] The Conversation. Available at: <https://theconversation.com/5-reasons-why-zoom-meetings-are-so-exhausting-137404> [Accessed 19 March 2022].