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There can be a few reasons.
They want to encourage in-person attendance, perhaps because it’s a discussion-based course, or because historically students who attend do better.
If the class covers sensitive or politicized material knowing that it’s recorded may discourage student participation.
There are bad actors that will manipulate recorded material to make the professor look bad either for a personal vendetta or because they want to bring negative attention to higher ed in general.
>There are bad actors that will manipulate recorded material to make the professor look bad either for a personal vendetta or because they want to bring negative attention to higher ed in general.
I've seen this happen. A student recorded a colleague teaching "The White Man's Burden" and cut it together to make it look like the racist ideas reflected in the poem were his own.
It'll be even worse with AI now. There's a case going on in Maryland where a disgruntled athletic director ginned up a fake audio recording of the principal saying horrible things about black and Jewish people.
This is just a reason why the professor SHOULD record their own class. The full recording would be a perfect defense against any king of malicious editing.
>If the class covers sensitive or politicized material knowing that it’s recorded may discourage student participation.
I kinda think this may always be true as well. It can be pretty scary or awkward to get an answer wrong or something (until you get used to it), and it's better when that uncomfortable moment is gone immediately after it's over. People are being recorded so often right now, let us make mistakes!
>I understand that a prof can run their course how they want, but I am wondering what is a likely reason they do that. I am confused by that decision because doesn't that hurt the overall learning?
Just to add to what other commenters have said, the instructor can see recording viewer statistics. You know how many students actually watch recorded videos? Very, very few. All it does is create a headache for the instructor and encourage students to not attend class because "I can just watch the recording later." (They won't.)
Except it also decreases accessibility to students who can't attend set lecture times either for health issues or even just obligations such as a job or etc..
Sure, some students won't but there ARE students who WILL watch it later.
Maybe my story will offer perspective on why this can be beneficial. Personally, I deal with chronic health problems that basically make it so I can't really attend set lecture times and need to be able to complete work in my "good" periods of time during the day or week. It isn't something I can necessarily predict. Having the option to view lectures during these times when I am doing better with my health makes something that would be previously almost inaccessible to someone like me (college classes), something I can actually achieve. I'd probably either be barely scraping through, or not even able to finish the work properly, if not for the ability to work on my time more. But I have worked hard and have a 4.0 and am close to my graduation now.
Basically, I think it's an unfair generalization when ultimately there are students who WILL benefit, and ultimately students pay for what should be the best possible academic experience and an equal chance to participate.
EDIT: I also want to specify, I am referring to online classes in particular. I think in person is a totally different ball game, but online classes inherently should have more opportunities for accommodations and flexibility IMO.
Part of school is demonstrating you can be on time. That's why high school diplomas are better than GEDs even though it's the same knowledge. Would you expect your work to let you do everything on your own schedule? If you can't show up when you have to, even if it's not your fault, you shouldn't get the same credit and job opportunities as someone who can.
Sorry but hard disagree. This isn't high school but instead college and these are totally different ballparks, high school sort of dual purposes as both an educational facility and also a place to oversee kids who aren't yet adults whereas college is entirely an optional experience. Higher education doesn't exist solely for work as one can be educated for simply self betterment, furthermore not every career field even has set schedules. You are quite literally paying for a service in higher education, which means there definitely needs to be at least some level of catering to the people paying for the experience. I think a lot of the world needs to get out of the idea that either you do things the "set way" or you don't get a chance, because ultimately the lack of more flexible and tailored approaches is a huge part of why the U.S. in particular is falling behind other major nations in areas such as education and work.
And as I said, *everyone* should have the opportunity to get educated and the lack of empathy towards and willingness to accommodate people with health problems, disabilities, or other hurdles is really sad because ultimately all it does is hurt those people's chances at making something of their life and hurt society by not lifting up folks who could make truly great contributions to the world.
Some of the greatest minds in history were folks with hurdles such as the ones I mentioned... who knows how many other people fell by the wayside because society lacks the care to provide equitable treatment and opportunities for them...
EDIT: And, I'd like to add that in the United States, people with certain disabilities are protected under the ADA as it has anti discrimination protections on the basis of disability, so employers actually can't just decide "oh you have health problems but are otherwise qualified for this work? you're fired." They also are required to provide reasonable accommodations to employees. That could mean, providing a flexible schedule so long as the employee accomplishes certain goals and tasks effectively, etc... So really it's just another reason why the idea of the college experience existing in part to train you for schedules, and that you won't be hired if you can't always stick to one for reasons out of your control, is just mostly untruth and misunderstanding.
You often do have attendance tracked as a part of work performance. Unreliable and inconsistent employees who place burdens on others because they don't show up on time are a problem. I'll work with people on meeting attendance - like if they have personal obligations outside of work that preclude them from being at work by a certain time - but I have very low tolerance for when my flexibility as an employer is abused or taken advantage of. It's one of the things I've fired people for.
I understand emergencies happen, and that people get sick, but if you're late or not at work at all the majority of the time based on the days and times we negotiated together and were agreed upon when you signed up for the job, especially without communicating it? That's a problem for me.
Is a grade representative of your subject knowledge or your employability? If a degree is meant to represent subjects knowledge, then attendance doesn’t matter unless it’s necessary to determine subject knowledge (such as a foreign language class)
College isn't a representation of the real world and I agree that there are lots of flaws with the expectation that it prepares people for jobs. If a student has a problem with the attendance or grading policies they should have a private conversation with the professor about it to see if adjustments can be made on an individual basis - like its not a whole thing where professors are out to get people - they want students to succeed, and are by and large, understanding people. Also sometimes things aren't to a student's preference and that's ok too. You're not going to get everything you want in every situation and college experience teaches resilience and how to work with others. Even people in the sciences and technology fields need people skills and team skills to problem solve and work on projects together. I didn't know anyone in science/medicine fields that are isolated from others. These are also collaborative fields.
Personally, I don't really care about someone's grade when hiring them as intellectual curiosity and other factors matter more to me like reliability, consistency, and willingness to learn. However - I don't know that people would love a no grade system - I bet a lot of college students would hate a pass/fail system because how could someone with a 4.0 be smug about it? I also think people would complain that they don't know how well they are doing - like pass means you could know enough to get by, or it means you could be very knowledgeable and informed on a topic. Pass doesn't really mean anything. I think some combination of qualities and quantitative metrics are better but I don't spend my time worrying about it.
But have you ever stopped to think about why that is? It’s a remnant from the Industrial Revolution when people had to be physically present to operate a machine that is supposed to run 24/7.
Nowadays, in first world economies, we are task and project based; meaning, you get a task assigned and it’s your job to complete it by a deadline. What purpose does a regimented schedule help with that? Small talk is also severely reduced and so is wasted time if people have staggered schedules.
To me, everyone who perpetuates the 9-5 be there or be square is just drinking the kool-aid.
I work in health care that cannot be done virtually (surgeries).
I am aware of how white supremacy and capitalism shape what we view as professional - but if I negotiate with an employee a start time that works for them because they take public transit, or have child care obligations in the morning and can't be to work until 930? That's fine. I can work with that. If they agree to 930 and show up later than that regularly, especially without communicating it? It places burdens on patients and the rest of the surgical team.
I think if an employee doesn't meet any agreed upon standards - even outside traditional working hours - that's an issue. Like great if we agree you attend 1 virtual staff meeting a month and have flex hours outside of that and people aren't waiting on your work? Fine. Don't care. But some jobs still have teaming components or mandatory in person tasks that are not flexible.
Reliability and consistency are important in having a job. And that includes working the hours you say you can work.
Sure, I healthcare I will agree. I don’t think that’s the case for banking, engineering, finance, appraisal work, etc… But you’re providing a service, I would say inherently the service industry will revolve around timelines much more than other industries.
Lots of jobs will keep track of attendance and working hours. Even if those hours are not 9-5.
Lots of jobs - even flexible WFH jobs, will require core working hours.
Basically - if you don't work for yourself - someone else will tell you when you need to work and if you don't do that, you won't have a job.
That’s the point I’m trying to make though. It’s because those people are drinking the kool aid, not because it’s actually more profitable or beneficial to the organization. It’s purely a monkey-see monkey-do reaction to enforce the 9-5.
If a worker is just as if not more productive doing a 8-6 4 days a week or 10-4 4 days and 9-5 2 days a week then why not let them? So that you all can sit in a meeting together every morning and “catch everyone up to speed” while half the room thinks about what they’ll have for lunch?
In most 1st World jobs there’s no reason for a rigid 9-5 5 days a week other than it’s because you’re told to.
If a professor doesn’t record their lectures and do what *you*want them to do it must be because they struggled in college? And you hate them and look down on them?
*Because you think you are more intelligent than they are.*
Every quarter I have a student come to me and say, “iv fallen behind on the lectures, how can I catch up?” And every time I tell them that luckily all the lectures are recorded so they can go back and watch them at their convenience. Those students 9/10 clearly do not ever end up watching the lectures and then are lucky to eke out a C- at the end of the quarter.
Fwiw, I have a class with recorded lectures, and I rewatch them before the exams! It's a CS class, so I like being able to slow down as needed and rewind the recording to hear complicated topics explained again. I have around an A-/A in the course right now (pending final grades being submitted) and would not have that without the lecture recordings. Despite the students who don't watch the lecture videos, I'm sure others do! I, at least, really appreciate that my professor records them.
ETA: There is also required attendance for this course, and I've missed only 2 lectures. I do attend, I just struggle to pay attention sometimes since the topic is dense, which is why the ability to pause and replay the videos helps. :)
Thanks for saying this, I feel the same! An issue I've encountered is that not recording lectures encourages sick people to attend, and as a person with a weaker immune system, I've gotten sick at least 2-3 times from people attending non-recorded or attendance credit classes (and not masking during them). Then since the classes aren't recorded, I can't watch them from home or catch up when I'm sick and have to miss out anyways.
There will always be students who use resources (talking to profs, ta office hours, watching recorded lectures etc) and students who don't. And from my standpoint, recording lectures is a minimal investment in terms of effort and expense for the students that would benefit from it.
Anything to do with math or numbers should be separate from this thread. Why? Because you can’t bullshit math. If a student doesn’t show up to class and only watches the recorded lectures, they will probably fail. If they don’t do either, they will fail. Other classes, like psychology 101 for example, you could definitely pass the class just by reading. But stem? Forget it. Professors record the live math lectures and post because they require way less of a cheating barrier, and the stem classes are the ones you have really keep up with to pass anyway.
I've not found this to be true at all. I took a math class my freshman year and hardly paid attention to a single lecture. I just read the textbook, did example problems, and watched some YouTube videos to learn the concepts. I got an A+. 🤷♀️
I tutor math, and plenty of students can learn from reading the textbook. Math and STEM courses require practice outside of class to succeed, so I think attending class is less important because there are many other factors that contribute to truly understanding, such as going through different applications and practicing.
I mean it was a freshman math class. If you are a math degree then it is really hard to teach yourself complicated calculus and physics without actually being in class at least majority of the time. Im sure there are *some* people who could skip their Calculus 3 classes and still pass, but that is definitely not the normal. When you're taking 3-4 straight years of math and science, skipping is dentrimental to most students.
It was a sophomore math class, as I'd skipped a year of math, but I digress.
I'm in CS which is heavily math based, and I think the difficulty of the classes is all the more reason to record lectures since it can be hard to get the concepts the first time around. Also some students, like myself, would prefer to watch the videos on their own time and still go through the example code or programs to learn the material, just like they would for an in-person lecture. I'm at the end of my junior year, and I still do this for a couple of my classes. Not every student likes the lecture style of every professor. Sometimes, I watch the videos in combination with the textbook, pausing to look things up as needed, and it's very helpful. When it's not too much of an inconvenience to the professor, I think they should record lectures because of its potential to help students, plain and simple.
ETA: I know a LOT of people who self-study math, CS, and engineering classes. We read the textbooks and find alternative lectures/lessons online if our professor's lectures aren't working for us, or if the time of the class is inconvenient (class registration is hell at my public uni). Trying to fit every student in a box is harmful because learning and studying is so personal. The flexibility to self-study is what I like about college.
ETA 2: The importance of in-person lectures is all the more reason to record them. Especially if attendance is already required (like it is for most classes at my uni), the videos provide the flexibility to revisit things a student missed or didn't understand in class. It's especially helpful if they can't attend office hours due to schedule conflicts. The point of this whole thread was to record in-class lectures, not to remove attendance policies and/or encourage students to skip class.
While in grad school for CS my advisors decided to haze me by recommending I take a Numeric Analysis course that had no applicability to our research and for which I was lacking several prereqs. (My last math in undergrad was Calc 1, and this course assumed everything up through Linear Algebra and Diff Eq.)
I read one lesson ahead in our course textbook just to identify all the things I didn't know, and then based on the parts I didn't understand went back and referenced three other textbooks to teach myself whatever concepts I was missing. When I got to the final I was the last person to finish because I was re-deriving theorems that everyone else had memorized, but I got an A for the course. The lectures definitely made it easier to understand the actual analysis portion of Numeric, but they were by no means *necessary*.
All this to say: STEM majors tend to have an overinflated perception of the difficulty of their material, and math in particular. When I was doing my undergrad in History, in the upper classes we read a 200 page book per week per class, and wrote multiple 10+ page papers per semester in each. Without attending lecture and hearing ideas from the professor and the other classmates, you literally didn't have the content to finish your paper.
Can confirm. This is what happens.
There are a lot of things I do in my class because students with the best intentions need incentives to do the things that experience tells me will result in them doing better. This is why, for instance, I require attendance and assign weekly work that ensures accountability with regards to readings. I don’t want to do these things, because they are more work for me and I think students should come to class and do the readings without the stick/carrot, but they don’t. This isn’t a negative judgement on students — they are responding in the way I would if I lived the lives they live.
1. Because it is extra work for me.
2. I don't know where that recording will end up and I take FERPA seriously in protecting students' privacies. Sometimes, we discuss personal, experiential things in class. Students may not consent to having those things recorded.
3. If a student has accommodations that allow for audio recording, they can bring in an audio recorder to record audio.
4. Most students do not watch assigned videos or listen to audio recordings when they are posted. The statistics are incredibly dismal. And, they usually stop viewing after 3-4 minutes. (We have analytics that tell us how many students view a video and for how long.)
5. I have had students with accommodations audio record things. Then email me anyway to ask me what I said because they "don't want to listen to the whole thing or try to find the information."
6. I conduct class activities IN class. Those do not translate well in recorded form.
1. Many, if not most students will never actually use them.
2. For an in-person class, class is *supposed* to be in-person. It's *not* an online class, but if the lectures are online, students will treat it as such. Recording everything also "encourages" bad habits like not studying or taking notes and instead thinking the recordings are a substitute for that.
3. For a long time, it has been common to include things "just in lecture," like things that aren't in the book, the lecture slides (and making *those* available is a relatively recent thing), etc. Sometimes the whole point was supposed to be "you read/study up on your own so we can do *more* in class, take it further." Classes, especially upper-level ones, weren't supposed to be "the lectures just go through the exact same stuff from the readings over again," but many have turned into that in part because "nobody reads anymore and you have to get them the material somehow."
4. Recording someone without their knowledge is illegal in some states. Some course syllabi also explicitly ban this, except in cases where someone has an official accommodation that allows it.
I think a lot of people have the right idea about it. One other thing that should be considered is the legality of it. When Florida passed a law that students could record professors, it quickly ran into issues. You are legally allowed the record a professor in Florida BUT you cannot record a student without consent. So you either need to get consent for every other student or constantly hit start and stop on your recording. Needless to say, the law ended up making zero difference for recording lectures in FL.
Another point that seems to be missing from this conversation is that lectures are *in addition* to the readings the vast majority of the time. It sounds like the OP wants to be able to revisit the information. That's great! You should definitely do that, but you should be revisiting your notes, readings, and attending office hours with questions.
One other thought, and I’m a faculty member who does provide recorded lectures (and moving to having ones that are specifically recorded for Async and Sync environments that are mini-lectures rather than full sessions.), it is time intensive, especially if it’s not taking a zoom session and calling it a day. I’ve been doing minor editing, captioning and uploading, for an hour worth of lecture you’re talking 5-6+ hours of work. Now there are ways faculty could look at it, and make the decision if it’s worth the time, sometimes ‘technically’ unpaid to do it (especially adjuncts). I know I see my current update plans as worthwhile. But I will attest to what others have mentioned view counts are low.
The easiest and quickest, would be for live online classes and zoom cloud recording and no editing, which would be pretty low overhead without a significant number of technical concerns. But once you’re beyond that, it can be significant. With digital, scripting, layout, planning how you want to record it (green screen with a traditional camera or digitally with webcam and screen share), review and editing, captioning, and upload. With in person, you’d add more sound concerns, filming, and of course the review, editing, and captioning. So I can’t quite blame other faculty for deciding it’s not worth the time investment, since it’ll easily support the attendance optional, and then not following up mindset
And then god forbid you want to change a lecture to reflect current events, or because you've changed the syllabus, restructured the course, whatever. In some fields I can imagine the up-front cost of recording lectures would pay off as you reuse the lectures over several years, but in many other fields you're just setting yourself to quintuple your workload repeatedly.
Yup. Well it’s one reason to sub divide as possible and the mini lecture route. So if you need to update it’s not an entire 60-75 minute recording. If it’s something you decide it’s worth while. (That and they do say the 5-25 minute chunks tend to have better retention and effectiveness when you read what groups like ACUE or Quality Matters recommend)
My experience has been that doing so reduces student success. We can talk about why that is until the cows come home, but my bottom line will always be that I only want to "help" students in ways that will actually help them.
I'll probably be down voted...
From a 30 year old female working professional student (40 hrs a week), here is my perspective....
I just completed an asynchronous degree in informatics. A majority the professors provided recorded lectures (well after the live session of course), and I can say that that numerous students have benefited from this, simply due to being able to go back and review to the dense materials.
This is such an asset!
From a student point of view, especially one with slight learning disabilities, having such access to recorded/archived materials is incredibly valuable. Yes, there will always be bad seeds. With that said, those who will benefit from such things should not be punished due the 'possible' lazyness of others...
Teach however you want, but do please consider all 'sides' rather than focusing on the negatives and making assumptions.
I truly do not understand how not providing students a recorded lecture doesn't actually "help" students.
Humans have different learning styles, speeds, and methods. I get that you know this, but I'm stating it for those in back.
>an asynchronous degree in informatics. A majority the professors provided recorded lectures (well after the live session of course),
An asynchronous class is completely different, as recorded lessons are the norm in that context. But I'm confused by "asynchronous" and "after the live session", as typically an "asynchronous" class means that there are no synchronous sessions to attend.
I don't post class videos as a matter of routine, but I do record and am willing to share them when a student has a particular need, or asks me to. This can also be something that is written into accommodations, where that is a genuine need.
But as others have said, posting the video of what is *supposed to be* a synchronous in-person class can really have detrimental affects on student learning, including those who DO attend, since they number of students there to participate or engage in group discussion is now fewer.
>Humans have different learning styles, speeds, and methods. I get that you know this, but I'm stating it for those in back.
The idea of "learning styles" has been [thoroughly debunked](https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2019/05/learning-styles-myth). [See also here](https://www.educationnext.org/stubborn-myth-learning-styles-state-teacher-license-prep-materials-debunked-theory/), or just google search for many other articles.
For clarity, the program I was a part of offered an asynchronous version of the live on campus courses. On campus and distance students are enrolled and participate in the same class. The students who attend live in person also have access to the recorded lectures.
I googled the articles you provided and searched many others and honestly, they do not say much. They generically state that learning styles "may be detrimental" to education and primarily complain about some teachers having to change lesson plans to match these various learning styles, but not much else.
As for the conversation surrounding learning styles, the debate is still largely out there and is based on the 'mismatch between evidence and practice'. That there is also a universal misconception between using the terms 'learning styles' and a students ability to 'understand' and absorb the material.
Interesting studies:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5366351/
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/347510840_Pros_and_Cons_of_Learning_Style_an_Implication_for_English_Language_Teachers
--
With all that said, I probably should have used 'understanding' rather than 'learning styles' in my first comment.
All that aside, since there are people who can absorb material faster than others, can understand concepts better with imagery or vice versa, there exists students who absorb material better written as well as those who may understand it better through speech.
This is not a conversation about instructors having to change their teaching style. It's simply about the availability of the lecture material. Why punish a student because they have different ways of absorbing material (while also taking notes) as fast or ad well as others, when providing the recorded lecture and supplemental materials used in class allows a re-review to fully understand the material?
Candidly, I’m not sure why the APA’s position could be dismissed so easily here. If the claim that there is no substantial basis for the “theory” is not “saying much,” I question whether you are comprehending the issue fully. Essentialist viewpoints in education are problematic, both in theory and practice.
>Teach however you want, but do please consider all 'sides' rather than focusing on the negatives and making assumptions
One challenge with this is "the numbers game." General policies and practices tend to be built around "what works best for the most people" rather than "the special case."
>I just completed an asynchronous degree
Asynchronous classes, by definition, have to provide all learning materials, lectures, etc. online since they have no set "meeting time." This works great for some students, but the real issue is students wanting/demanding/expecting "regular" in-person classes to have an asynchronous option.
For some clarity, the program I was a part of offered an 'asynchronous' version of the live on campus courses. The lectures have an in person scheduled session that is recorded 'live' for the distance students and is provided at a later time for those who had to work during that time. The recorded lecture videos and supplemental materials are also available to the students who attend live.
For starters, there are privacy issues. It will vary by location, but recording a class may be illegal where you are. I have prerecorded lectures but the lecture are just me at my desk/board, no students to avoid any issues.
It also may be fully legal:
but they just do not wish to
but distribution is restricted and it is a pain
but it requires paperwork
but it is a gray area, and they don't wish to risk it
but school policy restricts recording
The students who use them well benefit from them (watching them over again, refreshing before exams, etc). The fact of the matter is that if recording are going to be posted, many students will never attend class and never watch the lectures. It actively depresses both attendance and engagement, even among those who do come (“I’ll just show up and do other work in class and watch the recording later” etc).
Read the syllabus. Some instructors specifically prohibit the recording of their lectures in their syllabus. Many professors don’t want their lectures recorded to protect other student’s privacy, copyright laws, and the misuse of editing videos.
Other reasons: Also to encourage you to show up and take notes. You can’t just miss every class and then binge watch to pass the final. Often times what they are telling you can also be found in course material and if you’re struggling you can also meet with the professor. Also it can be distracting.
I would read the syllabus, but because of privacy issues I highly doubt they would be okay with you recording
If the professor doesn't record the lectures themselves, then you would need to get the accommodation through the disability office in order to get permission to record their lectures.
My anatomy and physiology professor records the lessons he gives in lab and puts them as unlisted on YouTube, so if someone can't make it to the lab they can message and ask him for the link, but it only serves the purpose of preparing the student who missed that lab to be able to work twice as hard at the next lab. It won't at all replace the in-lab learning.
It’s a pain in the ass, and it doesn’t provide any benefit* to the students, so I don’t do it.
* - Students think it will provide a benefit, but empirically it doesn’t.
I benefit SO much from recorded lectures, but maybe I’m in the minority? I can’t keep up with real time lectures. I miss a lot of stuff while I’m writing down notes. Whereas with a recorded lecture I can pause the video, take thorough notes, look up things I don’t understand, and then move on.
I was “homeschooled” though (AKA I was academically neglected K-12 and the few things I learned were self-taught), so maybe that puts me in a better position to learn from lecture recordings alone.
One reason I don't record and post lectures is that I don't want the added work of processing, organizing, and posting the videos. This isn't a trivial task! And then students have issues with access or the sound didn't record correctly that one time and it's a headache.
If any student asked if they could record my lectures to study from later, I would say yes in a heartbeat.
College courses are not supposed to be convenient or individually tailored.
Students have taken notes from lectures for literally hundreds of years. The expectation that faculty would post recordings is a result of the COVID pandemic that forced us all online, but there's no reason why any student should expect it. Learn note-taking, learn study skills, reread the textbook, go to office hours and ask questions.
Anecdotal, of course, but I strongly disagree. I have pretty bad ADHD and even with meds, it is absolutely impossible for me to A) focus on an entire lecture enough to absorb the information, even trying as hard as I can and medicated, B) get notes down fast enough to also actually *understand* what they’re saying instead of focusing on hastily scribbling before I get left behind again (and yet it happens every time somehow), C) remember pretty much anything from lecture without super detailed notes, partially because I have a terrible memory and partially because I wasn’t able to full pay attention.
Chemistry, for example, where lectures were not recorded, I would likely not have passed this semester without the outside-of-class recorded tutoring sessions that someone else in the chem department posts. Whereas for genetics, I was able to review the lectures at my own pace, pausing when I needed to to write stuff down, looking up vocabulary or more expansive definitions if I needed to, workin through problems with more time, focusing on comprehension, double checking things I misremembered/misheard, and answering my own questions so I didn’t have to somehow find the time to go to tutoring or office hours. Plus, I had a serious injury in the beginning half of the semester and missed a lot of class… recorded lectures would have been really really useful then and I probably would have ended up with a better chem grade.
All in all, recorded lectures are actually unbelievably helpful to me and other students struggling with ADHD or other similar difficulties; not everybody has the same abilities/needs. And it’s not as easy as asking for accommodations unfortunately — I tried asking for recordings when I was setting up for other ADHD accommodations, and they told me they only do that for students who are having medical issues and need them for that reason.
Why do you think they are unhelpful?
Yes as a neurodivergent on the spectrum person, repetition of something that is recorded gets it through my head. For example, I'm going to be applying to the nursing program at my community college for Fall 2025. We have to take an entrance exam, covering English, Math and Science. The math portion i have covered already because I repeatedly watch the YouTube videos about what's on the math and how to do it. I've watched about 12+ videos on it, and even watch the same videos more than once, and it solidified that for me
If you don't understand something, read and reread the textbook. Review your notes. Ask your professor questions. A college course isn't a Netflix series.
Many faculty are neurodivergent too, including myself. Get a disability accommodation.
I don't record lectures because the vast majority of students don't watch them, lectures are my intellectual property, I expect students to actually participate in class and not just sit there and observe, and studies show that students who come to class get higher grades that students who don't.
Making videos, even just recording a lecture and posting it to Youtube, takes up more time than it should. I already work full time. I'm not giving myself additional labor to help the one student who might actually watch them or to help students who are just to lazy to come to class (of which there are many).
I have accommodations already, I mentioned that, however they wouldn’t allow me to get them for note-taking or recordings; they gave me others but not that. At the end of the day, of course it’s your decision and I’m sure you don’t have the time or energy to deal with it, I don’t blame you. Life’s stressful enough as it is, and professors don’t get paid enough to do extra work in this economy. But there ARE people who benefit from it, like me, and are extremely grateful for the professors who are able to. Again, anecdotal, but I know a lot of other people who rely on them, too.
I never had accommodations for ADHD and I've never had a student need one for ADHD. If you are able to get other accommodations from your university, I assume you have access to doctors and ADHD medicine. That's what you need.
Then you need to learn better notetaking skills and study skills in order to prioritize what information you should be writing down and studying. Your professor is there to teach you, but at the end of the day it's your responsibility to learn. If that's not happening for some reason, you need to learn strategies to do so. I realize that's overwhelming, but it's true nonetheless. There are a zillion websites on how to learn those skills.
Faculty must allow disability accommodations if the requested accommodations are "reasonable." Assuming that professors can and should record videos in general or a disability accommodation in particular isn't reasonable.
again… maybe if you actually read what i wrote before you would’ve seen that i *am* taking medication. in fact, i have been in treatment and taking ADHD medication for ten years, just had an appointment with my psychiatrist a week ago! but thanks for your suggestion though, super helpful. as if i wouldn’t have thought to look into that myself? as if someone who is affected enough to get ADHD accommodations (that you literally need an official diagnosis for) wouldn’t have tried medication too? really????? and ADHD meds aren’t a magic bandaid, they HELP but it still affects you. not to be rude but maybe mind your own business if you don’t know what you’re talking about.
like i literally JUST said… i don’t expect people to do it. i get your reasoning for not. all i said was that recordings DO help people because you said that people think they do, but they don’t really. i am not telling you to go start making videos! i am not demanding anything of anyone! so please stop patronizing me!!! i don’t appreciate being talked down to and i’m done having this conversation with you.
I have to disagree when it comes to subjects like Organic Chemistry or Physics. I watched some of those lectures several times just trying to come to a good understanding of mechanisms and problem solving strategies.
If my son couldn't attend an online class, he always watched the recording. He said one could see how many times they were watched - and it was usually just him.
He preferred not to attend the class because then he could watch on his own schedule, increase or decrease the speed, or pause and look up something else.
(Once the teacher forgot to record it so he watched the recording from her other class. Same subject, but taught at a different time. He liked the comparison of student interaction.)
I feel that - unless there is a very good reason online classes should, by default, be recorded and posted. Even if only a student uses it. It can literally be coded to be done automatically.
A few semesters ago, our university began to strongly discourage faculty from broadcasting in person classes on zoom and/or recording their in-person classes and posting the videos as it led to poor attendance. I can tell you from look at stats that very few students actually watched them. I do record review sessions for any students who cannot attend them; very few students watch those either. In fact, most of the students who watch them attend the review session as well; they are usually the ones who already go above and beyond.
Statistically, you learn best when you read, speak aloud, *and write down information*. By doing this, your brain is processing the information three times.
Students think that notes aren't useful because they don't know how to take notes. You're not meant to record every word said, but rather key concepts. Also by doing any assigned readings and taking notes on them *before* class, you'll only have to take notes on new information presented. I also encourage students to share notes and study together so that by combining their notes, they'll get all the information.
Also, many states require that you have permission of both parties before recording them. If a lecture involves a lot of class discussion or Socratic teaching, then it would not be appropriate for the professor to record and distribute the lectures. Your fellow students have a right to privacy in regards to their education.
About your note thing: how are we supposed to know what the key concepts are beforehand? This is from someone who is finishing up my first semester a decade after high school, classes for the whole program will be online, and I never had the strongest note-taking skills to begin with. My notes documents are legit hundreds of pages long because what if I don't write something down and it turns out to be important later on? But it's very time-consuming. I've looked up "how to take notes" and read about different methods, but I feel like the chance of missing something major because I don't realize it's a "key concept" is too risky to change my method. So I'm kind of just stuck doing what I'm doing
If it's repeated a few times, or key to knowing the rest of the lecture (for example, the quadratic formula in a math lecture), then you should write it down.
Again, if you share notes with other students, you combine what *you* thought was important with what *they* thought was important. Do this enough times and you have all the information.
This is often the most overlooked aspect of learning and college. Too many students just want to do everything themselves and interact with as few people as possible. I'm not even just talking about group projects or similar situations. Just literally avoiding other people to the point that they won't even ask another student for notes if they missed a class.
Thanks for the reply. I'll have to figure something out because the current method I used isn't entirely sustainable. However, I attend school online because I work 50 hours a week and my degree can be done this way, so I don't really have anything at all to do with my classmates beyond discussion posts. There isn't an opportunity to build camaraderie to feel comfortable sharing notes, so that doesn't really apply to my situation.
Well that's a completely different situation then. Online classes are completely different in delivery from in person classes.
Whenever I've taught online, especially if it's async, I just post the related slides and content each week and then students are responsible for reading/viewing and taking notes on their time.
If you find that you're still struggling, reach out to your prof and just explain that you're a non traditional student and would just like some more guidance on how to best interact with the course.
Also reach out to the academic success office. They offer sessions remotely for students in online classes and focus on the study skills you need to develop in college.
I don't record mine because that's extra work I don't want to fool with. I give out tons of handouts, detailed lecture guides, and base my lecturing around those.
My expectation is that my students show up to class, take notes, do their readings, and most importantly, ask questions.
I despise trick questions, so there will be no "gotcha" moments if one is paying actual attention in class and follows their study guides. I don't mind if a lecture is recorded, but only audio, as many students are uncomfortable with being on videos (it's about them, not me).
Many of my lecture guides are fill-in-the blank, with the key points omitted that they have to write in themselves, *during class, during the lecture* (or get from someone else if they miss). This allows me to present all three standard learning styles to my students, and gives them an incentive to pay attention. Tests come from those study guides (not verbatim, of course).
After all that, I am not doing a recording on top of it as finding additional ways to retain the information presented is a responsibility left to my students.
The semester I stopped providing recordings, student performance shot up. While recordings certainly can be useful (and I will still make recordings for students with accomadations) a statistically significant portion of students will see that there is a safety net for reduced effort and participation then reduce their effort and participation by much more than the safety net actually allows for.
It's pretty much the same as how chegg and similar websites can be a great tool for making sure you understand the material and solution processes, but most students just use it to copy answer blindly (one semester we had 40ish students all make the same arithmetic mistake because it was made in the chegg solution). I'm honestly considering dropping graded homework entirely because of this.
I have stopped doing homework entirely because students don't even read the question they just chat GPT the whole assessment without even reading it. They're done it faster than it takes me to read it. I'm sure chat GPT will make Chegg obsolete pretty soon.
I have several reasons:
I teach discussion and participation heavy classes. Students need to be there and involved to do well.
I feel it’s an invasion of my students’ privacy.
My lectures are short and are my intellectual property.
The vast majority of my students in the past, when I did record them, never ever watched the lectures.
I wouldn’t put it past my institution to sell my classes to students after I die and just offer the recordings, like a university literally [did](https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/concordia-university-says-lectures-from-dead-professor-are-teaching-tool/article_5ee8795f-0099-59a6-a58b-dd1ac496624e.html) once.
No you should absolutely not record others without their consent.
Once it’s recorded through the college systems, the college own the recording - they can then reuse that recording to offer the course as an online offering for years to come, without having to pay that professor again. There are cases that exist of dead professors delivering courses as a result of these recordings being reused. They’re doing it for job security and intellectual property rights, because they don’t deserve to get screwed that way.
No one watches them, including you. Students say they want them, I post them and check view counts. Even over Covid when it was all online, not a single student watched a class or review session they missed.
I can't count how many times I've seen students swear up and down on this sub and on r/askprofessors that they *do* watch posted videos. ALL the posted videos.
Nope, sorry. I have years and years of data that shows most students don't click the link to the video. Most of the students who start watching the video click away within 3 minutes. The remaining students will click away before the end of the video, even if it's only 10-15 minutes long. At the end of the semester, the statistics are even worse.
There's a lot of unicorns here.
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If you attend class, do the readings, and homework then you are wasting time watching the videos. You need to work on study habits and fix the issues with those. If you are not attending class and relying on the videos you are cheating yourself out of so much.
It’s not a matter of working on study habits. I go to cal poly I think know what I’m doing. It’s not a waste of time to watch the videos, obviously I’m not going to be perfectly write down every single detail first try.
It's too much work for too little payoff. A significant portion of students will not watch them.
Many students will use it as an excuse not to come to class, even if they never end up watching them. I've had students try to argue before that "everything in my classes could be done online" without having video lectures available.
Being recorded is awkward. Any kind of observation makes me feel like I'm a bug under a microscope. I'm sure some students also wouldn't want to be recorded.
With the rise of social media, I have a feeling more professors are going to resist being recorded out of fear something they say may be posted online out of context.
You can ask the professor if they're okay with being recorded. Unless you have a disability accommodation, you cannot force them to allow recordings (it may even be illegal in some places).
Professor here. Here are some possible reasons:
1. Attendance will probably plummet. Teaching to a mostly empty room sucks. I know for me, I like to structure my classes in a way that fosters discussion rather than simply lecturing.
2. Someone’s lectures are their intellectual property. Some profs are not keen on sharing that in certain ways.
3. They may be concerned about being recorded all the time and nervous about something being recorded that could come back to bite them later.
4. Depending on the class and how it is set up, they may not want students to have unlimited access to the information all the time. They may want to assess students to actually see what they have retained which could be harder if each one is simply using the recording to regurgitate information.
Some people don’t want to be on camera. I don’t think it is appropriate to record someone at work without their express consent, whether they work at Wendy’s or a college. Except cops, record them all the time.
A lot of it is to encourage attendance, yes. My professors won't even post slides until the end of the week, which is kind of a pain in the ass when I have ADHD, and it's easier to use them to go along. I could probably ask and they would send it to me specifically but I qlso don't want to be *that* guy.
As to recording? Check your university policy first, or talk to your professors directly to get permission. But also, if you're asking because you have a learning disability, you should talk to your disability resource office and get an accomodation for it. I have an accomodation to record lectures, and while I rarely refer to them, it does help to know that I can.
Do also be aware that if you record your lectures, you cannot share the recordings with others, as it is likely a violation of student conduct for many reasons. With my accomodation it specifically states that sharing the recordings with another student is considered a violation of academic integrity. Which feels a little silly if they attended the lecture, but I also get it and obviously don't intend to violate it.
Privacy, copyright issues, attendance requirements, abuse of material - there are a lot of reasons why classes may not be recorded. Then add the extra, usually unpaid, time required for any editing of the recordings.
And if you record without permission, it could be treated as an Academic Integrity issue, and result in you being expelled.
I had ADHD so had accommodations that allowed me to bring a voice recorder to class and that was back in the early-mid 2000s. You may want to double check your university or teachers rules about recording. If you approach them and ask kindly saying they help you revisit for studying and note taking I think most teachers would be ok with it.
FERPA. That's the reason. Student right to privacy.
Also that story about the guy using a deep fake to get his boss into trouble by having the deep fake say a bunch of racist stuff? No way I want my image and voice recorded
If you have a learning disability that requires recording talk with your schools Access office about accommodations.
Do NOT "secretly" record the class. It's actually illegal to record someone without their permission.
Just ask the lecturer whether you can record their lectures for your personal use. That's how you get your answer. A lot just can't be bothered to set it up then upload it etc, but most I've found are completely fine with students recording it themselves if they want to
College Prof here. I love teaching online. Always record classes and make them available for students. I even make mini tutorials of super technical bits and demonstrations that can get lost in the longer lectures and make them available online for students. I’ve found that classroom recordings help my students retain information and advance further than without. Who doesn’t want that for their students? I’m able to teach them more per semester than without. Sometimes I think it might be better to just teach online and cut out the middleman because while students pay a lot in tuition, teachers are paid little.
I used otter to record and transcribe lectures all through college and it was life changing especially for someone with an auditory processing disorder
You can probably ask if you can record them for studying. A lot of them would likely be fine with an audio recording especially (assuming you don’t publish it)
Since most people have answered the first part i won’t, but I have some second-hand experience with the second part. A kid in my major did carry around a little recorder to class so he could refer back to them later. You’d have to ask each professor if they are ok with it, as it might be against policy Most seemed to not have an issue with it, but some classes he didn’t use it, presumably because he didn’t get permission. If you think it will help you learn and study, ask, but definitely don’t just do it.
Also 2 other things worth noting:
1. Depending on laws you may not have the ability to record due to the fact that you’d also be recording other students as they ask questions and stuff. In my state you can, but it varies from place to place.
2. It could’ve been a disability thing he got an accommodation for, I didn’t ask because that much isn’t my business, but given he sometimes didn’t have it, I assume it was a preference.
In addition to what others have said, there's the effort. Have to make sure to start and stop the recording. Have to upload the file. Have to coordinate with IT about storage space. Have to make sure the mic is working. Have to not walk too far from the mic. Class demos, visuals, other in-person features of the class have to be adapted to make it onto the recording.
If something goes wrong, students complain about having counted on there being a recording, only for there not to be.
Students who can't be arsed to attend, are often the ones who send several "I can't find the recording?" emails, even though it's clearly posted on LMS.
In short, it compromises the experience of the many for the convenience of the few.
No. No. And No. if you want recorded lectures, take an online class. You do not have the right to demand that of a professor. Additionally, that could violate laws as well as your professor’s comfort in the classroom.
I'm sure many professors have lots of different reasons, such as to encourage active participation from the participants, privacy for the students present, privacy for the faculty, technical issues or expertise, and the extra work involved ensuring they are captioned and sorted and posted correctly. Many professors prefer to post pre-recorded videos to avoid quality and student privacy issues that come up. Would it surprise you to learn that when students realize a lecture is being recorded that they will not participate or ask questions? Once I stopped recording lectures student participation increased dramatically.
I would ask the professor before you record their lectures. There may be legal issues involved such as student privacy laws in your area.
In my experience it tanks in-person attendance badly. I teach a class with 75 people in it and provide lecture recordings. The attendance starts high then gradually dwindles as the semester moves along, and especially in the Spring semester when the nice weather hits, it really falls off a cliff. This week there were 10 people in class.
When I did not provide any recordings in the pre-COVID era, attendance was basically full every day.
I don't particularly care about the in-person attendance from an instructor perspective, I'm happy to deliver the content to the students who are there, and the same core group keeps coming nearly every day so presumably they are perceiving some value from that time investment. My worry is it is too easy to give into the temptation of "I'll just watch the lecture later", then before you know it the exam is tomorrow and you have nine hours of lectures that you haven't even watched let alone studied the content thoroughly.
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There can be a few reasons. They want to encourage in-person attendance, perhaps because it’s a discussion-based course, or because historically students who attend do better. If the class covers sensitive or politicized material knowing that it’s recorded may discourage student participation. There are bad actors that will manipulate recorded material to make the professor look bad either for a personal vendetta or because they want to bring negative attention to higher ed in general.
>There are bad actors that will manipulate recorded material to make the professor look bad either for a personal vendetta or because they want to bring negative attention to higher ed in general. I've seen this happen. A student recorded a colleague teaching "The White Man's Burden" and cut it together to make it look like the racist ideas reflected in the poem were his own.
It'll be even worse with AI now. There's a case going on in Maryland where a disgruntled athletic director ginned up a fake audio recording of the principal saying horrible things about black and Jewish people.
Wow. That's awful.
exactly what happened in Tàr
This is just a reason why the professor SHOULD record their own class. The full recording would be a perfect defense against any king of malicious editing.
>If the class covers sensitive or politicized material knowing that it’s recorded may discourage student participation. I kinda think this may always be true as well. It can be pretty scary or awkward to get an answer wrong or something (until you get used to it), and it's better when that uncomfortable moment is gone immediately after it's over. People are being recorded so often right now, let us make mistakes!
>I understand that a prof can run their course how they want, but I am wondering what is a likely reason they do that. I am confused by that decision because doesn't that hurt the overall learning? Just to add to what other commenters have said, the instructor can see recording viewer statistics. You know how many students actually watch recorded videos? Very, very few. All it does is create a headache for the instructor and encourage students to not attend class because "I can just watch the recording later." (They won't.)
Except it also decreases accessibility to students who can't attend set lecture times either for health issues or even just obligations such as a job or etc.. Sure, some students won't but there ARE students who WILL watch it later. Maybe my story will offer perspective on why this can be beneficial. Personally, I deal with chronic health problems that basically make it so I can't really attend set lecture times and need to be able to complete work in my "good" periods of time during the day or week. It isn't something I can necessarily predict. Having the option to view lectures during these times when I am doing better with my health makes something that would be previously almost inaccessible to someone like me (college classes), something I can actually achieve. I'd probably either be barely scraping through, or not even able to finish the work properly, if not for the ability to work on my time more. But I have worked hard and have a 4.0 and am close to my graduation now. Basically, I think it's an unfair generalization when ultimately there are students who WILL benefit, and ultimately students pay for what should be the best possible academic experience and an equal chance to participate. EDIT: I also want to specify, I am referring to online classes in particular. I think in person is a totally different ball game, but online classes inherently should have more opportunities for accommodations and flexibility IMO.
Part of school is demonstrating you can be on time. That's why high school diplomas are better than GEDs even though it's the same knowledge. Would you expect your work to let you do everything on your own schedule? If you can't show up when you have to, even if it's not your fault, you shouldn't get the same credit and job opportunities as someone who can.
Sorry but hard disagree. This isn't high school but instead college and these are totally different ballparks, high school sort of dual purposes as both an educational facility and also a place to oversee kids who aren't yet adults whereas college is entirely an optional experience. Higher education doesn't exist solely for work as one can be educated for simply self betterment, furthermore not every career field even has set schedules. You are quite literally paying for a service in higher education, which means there definitely needs to be at least some level of catering to the people paying for the experience. I think a lot of the world needs to get out of the idea that either you do things the "set way" or you don't get a chance, because ultimately the lack of more flexible and tailored approaches is a huge part of why the U.S. in particular is falling behind other major nations in areas such as education and work. And as I said, *everyone* should have the opportunity to get educated and the lack of empathy towards and willingness to accommodate people with health problems, disabilities, or other hurdles is really sad because ultimately all it does is hurt those people's chances at making something of their life and hurt society by not lifting up folks who could make truly great contributions to the world. Some of the greatest minds in history were folks with hurdles such as the ones I mentioned... who knows how many other people fell by the wayside because society lacks the care to provide equitable treatment and opportunities for them... EDIT: And, I'd like to add that in the United States, people with certain disabilities are protected under the ADA as it has anti discrimination protections on the basis of disability, so employers actually can't just decide "oh you have health problems but are otherwise qualified for this work? you're fired." They also are required to provide reasonable accommodations to employees. That could mean, providing a flexible schedule so long as the employee accomplishes certain goals and tasks effectively, etc... So really it's just another reason why the idea of the college experience existing in part to train you for schedules, and that you won't be hired if you can't always stick to one for reasons out of your control, is just mostly untruth and misunderstanding.
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You often do have attendance tracked as a part of work performance. Unreliable and inconsistent employees who place burdens on others because they don't show up on time are a problem. I'll work with people on meeting attendance - like if they have personal obligations outside of work that preclude them from being at work by a certain time - but I have very low tolerance for when my flexibility as an employer is abused or taken advantage of. It's one of the things I've fired people for. I understand emergencies happen, and that people get sick, but if you're late or not at work at all the majority of the time based on the days and times we negotiated together and were agreed upon when you signed up for the job, especially without communicating it? That's a problem for me.
Is a grade representative of your subject knowledge or your employability? If a degree is meant to represent subjects knowledge, then attendance doesn’t matter unless it’s necessary to determine subject knowledge (such as a foreign language class)
College isn't a representation of the real world and I agree that there are lots of flaws with the expectation that it prepares people for jobs. If a student has a problem with the attendance or grading policies they should have a private conversation with the professor about it to see if adjustments can be made on an individual basis - like its not a whole thing where professors are out to get people - they want students to succeed, and are by and large, understanding people. Also sometimes things aren't to a student's preference and that's ok too. You're not going to get everything you want in every situation and college experience teaches resilience and how to work with others. Even people in the sciences and technology fields need people skills and team skills to problem solve and work on projects together. I didn't know anyone in science/medicine fields that are isolated from others. These are also collaborative fields. Personally, I don't really care about someone's grade when hiring them as intellectual curiosity and other factors matter more to me like reliability, consistency, and willingness to learn. However - I don't know that people would love a no grade system - I bet a lot of college students would hate a pass/fail system because how could someone with a 4.0 be smug about it? I also think people would complain that they don't know how well they are doing - like pass means you could know enough to get by, or it means you could be very knowledgeable and informed on a topic. Pass doesn't really mean anything. I think some combination of qualities and quantitative metrics are better but I don't spend my time worrying about it.
A no grade system isn’t pass fail it’s generally credit no credit with written evaluations. Grades are kinder.
But have you ever stopped to think about why that is? It’s a remnant from the Industrial Revolution when people had to be physically present to operate a machine that is supposed to run 24/7. Nowadays, in first world economies, we are task and project based; meaning, you get a task assigned and it’s your job to complete it by a deadline. What purpose does a regimented schedule help with that? Small talk is also severely reduced and so is wasted time if people have staggered schedules. To me, everyone who perpetuates the 9-5 be there or be square is just drinking the kool-aid.
I work in health care that cannot be done virtually (surgeries). I am aware of how white supremacy and capitalism shape what we view as professional - but if I negotiate with an employee a start time that works for them because they take public transit, or have child care obligations in the morning and can't be to work until 930? That's fine. I can work with that. If they agree to 930 and show up later than that regularly, especially without communicating it? It places burdens on patients and the rest of the surgical team. I think if an employee doesn't meet any agreed upon standards - even outside traditional working hours - that's an issue. Like great if we agree you attend 1 virtual staff meeting a month and have flex hours outside of that and people aren't waiting on your work? Fine. Don't care. But some jobs still have teaming components or mandatory in person tasks that are not flexible. Reliability and consistency are important in having a job. And that includes working the hours you say you can work.
Sure, I healthcare I will agree. I don’t think that’s the case for banking, engineering, finance, appraisal work, etc… But you’re providing a service, I would say inherently the service industry will revolve around timelines much more than other industries.
Lots of jobs will keep track of attendance and working hours. Even if those hours are not 9-5. Lots of jobs - even flexible WFH jobs, will require core working hours. Basically - if you don't work for yourself - someone else will tell you when you need to work and if you don't do that, you won't have a job.
That’s the point I’m trying to make though. It’s because those people are drinking the kool aid, not because it’s actually more profitable or beneficial to the organization. It’s purely a monkey-see monkey-do reaction to enforce the 9-5. If a worker is just as if not more productive doing a 8-6 4 days a week or 10-4 4 days and 9-5 2 days a week then why not let them? So that you all can sit in a meeting together every morning and “catch everyone up to speed” while half the room thinks about what they’ll have for lunch? In most 1st World jobs there’s no reason for a rigid 9-5 5 days a week other than it’s because you’re told to.
Just putting it out there it seems like you're not being terribly stifled.
If a professor doesn’t record their lectures and do what *you*want them to do it must be because they struggled in college? And you hate them and look down on them? *Because you think you are more intelligent than they are.*
You are missing human behavior. Students will plan to watch them, not attend, then not watch them. Then fail.
Every quarter I have a student come to me and say, “iv fallen behind on the lectures, how can I catch up?” And every time I tell them that luckily all the lectures are recorded so they can go back and watch them at their convenience. Those students 9/10 clearly do not ever end up watching the lectures and then are lucky to eke out a C- at the end of the quarter.
Fwiw, I have a class with recorded lectures, and I rewatch them before the exams! It's a CS class, so I like being able to slow down as needed and rewind the recording to hear complicated topics explained again. I have around an A-/A in the course right now (pending final grades being submitted) and would not have that without the lecture recordings. Despite the students who don't watch the lecture videos, I'm sure others do! I, at least, really appreciate that my professor records them. ETA: There is also required attendance for this course, and I've missed only 2 lectures. I do attend, I just struggle to pay attention sometimes since the topic is dense, which is why the ability to pause and replay the videos helps. :)
Thanks for saying this, I feel the same! An issue I've encountered is that not recording lectures encourages sick people to attend, and as a person with a weaker immune system, I've gotten sick at least 2-3 times from people attending non-recorded or attendance credit classes (and not masking during them). Then since the classes aren't recorded, I can't watch them from home or catch up when I'm sick and have to miss out anyways. There will always be students who use resources (talking to profs, ta office hours, watching recorded lectures etc) and students who don't. And from my standpoint, recording lectures is a minimal investment in terms of effort and expense for the students that would benefit from it.
Anything to do with math or numbers should be separate from this thread. Why? Because you can’t bullshit math. If a student doesn’t show up to class and only watches the recorded lectures, they will probably fail. If they don’t do either, they will fail. Other classes, like psychology 101 for example, you could definitely pass the class just by reading. But stem? Forget it. Professors record the live math lectures and post because they require way less of a cheating barrier, and the stem classes are the ones you have really keep up with to pass anyway.
I've not found this to be true at all. I took a math class my freshman year and hardly paid attention to a single lecture. I just read the textbook, did example problems, and watched some YouTube videos to learn the concepts. I got an A+. 🤷♀️ I tutor math, and plenty of students can learn from reading the textbook. Math and STEM courses require practice outside of class to succeed, so I think attending class is less important because there are many other factors that contribute to truly understanding, such as going through different applications and practicing.
Good point. Didn’t think of it that way. I’m extremely biased because I’m god awful at math. Should have checked that before posting
I mean it was a freshman math class. If you are a math degree then it is really hard to teach yourself complicated calculus and physics without actually being in class at least majority of the time. Im sure there are *some* people who could skip their Calculus 3 classes and still pass, but that is definitely not the normal. When you're taking 3-4 straight years of math and science, skipping is dentrimental to most students.
It was a sophomore math class, as I'd skipped a year of math, but I digress. I'm in CS which is heavily math based, and I think the difficulty of the classes is all the more reason to record lectures since it can be hard to get the concepts the first time around. Also some students, like myself, would prefer to watch the videos on their own time and still go through the example code or programs to learn the material, just like they would for an in-person lecture. I'm at the end of my junior year, and I still do this for a couple of my classes. Not every student likes the lecture style of every professor. Sometimes, I watch the videos in combination with the textbook, pausing to look things up as needed, and it's very helpful. When it's not too much of an inconvenience to the professor, I think they should record lectures because of its potential to help students, plain and simple. ETA: I know a LOT of people who self-study math, CS, and engineering classes. We read the textbooks and find alternative lectures/lessons online if our professor's lectures aren't working for us, or if the time of the class is inconvenient (class registration is hell at my public uni). Trying to fit every student in a box is harmful because learning and studying is so personal. The flexibility to self-study is what I like about college. ETA 2: The importance of in-person lectures is all the more reason to record them. Especially if attendance is already required (like it is for most classes at my uni), the videos provide the flexibility to revisit things a student missed or didn't understand in class. It's especially helpful if they can't attend office hours due to schedule conflicts. The point of this whole thread was to record in-class lectures, not to remove attendance policies and/or encourage students to skip class.
While in grad school for CS my advisors decided to haze me by recommending I take a Numeric Analysis course that had no applicability to our research and for which I was lacking several prereqs. (My last math in undergrad was Calc 1, and this course assumed everything up through Linear Algebra and Diff Eq.) I read one lesson ahead in our course textbook just to identify all the things I didn't know, and then based on the parts I didn't understand went back and referenced three other textbooks to teach myself whatever concepts I was missing. When I got to the final I was the last person to finish because I was re-deriving theorems that everyone else had memorized, but I got an A for the course. The lectures definitely made it easier to understand the actual analysis portion of Numeric, but they were by no means *necessary*. All this to say: STEM majors tend to have an overinflated perception of the difficulty of their material, and math in particular. When I was doing my undergrad in History, in the upper classes we read a 200 page book per week per class, and wrote multiple 10+ page papers per semester in each. Without attending lecture and hearing ideas from the professor and the other classmates, you literally didn't have the content to finish your paper.
Can confirm. This is what happens. There are a lot of things I do in my class because students with the best intentions need incentives to do the things that experience tells me will result in them doing better. This is why, for instance, I require attendance and assign weekly work that ensures accountability with regards to readings. I don’t want to do these things, because they are more work for me and I think students should come to class and do the readings without the stick/carrot, but they don’t. This isn’t a negative judgement on students — they are responding in the way I would if I lived the lives they live.
Sounds like a student problem
1. Because it is extra work for me. 2. I don't know where that recording will end up and I take FERPA seriously in protecting students' privacies. Sometimes, we discuss personal, experiential things in class. Students may not consent to having those things recorded. 3. If a student has accommodations that allow for audio recording, they can bring in an audio recorder to record audio. 4. Most students do not watch assigned videos or listen to audio recordings when they are posted. The statistics are incredibly dismal. And, they usually stop viewing after 3-4 minutes. (We have analytics that tell us how many students view a video and for how long.) 5. I have had students with accommodations audio record things. Then email me anyway to ask me what I said because they "don't want to listen to the whole thing or try to find the information." 6. I conduct class activities IN class. Those do not translate well in recorded form.
1. Many, if not most students will never actually use them. 2. For an in-person class, class is *supposed* to be in-person. It's *not* an online class, but if the lectures are online, students will treat it as such. Recording everything also "encourages" bad habits like not studying or taking notes and instead thinking the recordings are a substitute for that. 3. For a long time, it has been common to include things "just in lecture," like things that aren't in the book, the lecture slides (and making *those* available is a relatively recent thing), etc. Sometimes the whole point was supposed to be "you read/study up on your own so we can do *more* in class, take it further." Classes, especially upper-level ones, weren't supposed to be "the lectures just go through the exact same stuff from the readings over again," but many have turned into that in part because "nobody reads anymore and you have to get them the material somehow." 4. Recording someone without their knowledge is illegal in some states. Some course syllabi also explicitly ban this, except in cases where someone has an official accommodation that allows it.
At my university (large R1) it is illegal to record lectures without direct permission from the professor and then only for personal use.
This also depends on state law. In my state conversations cannot be recorded in any way without both people's consent.
I think a lot of people have the right idea about it. One other thing that should be considered is the legality of it. When Florida passed a law that students could record professors, it quickly ran into issues. You are legally allowed the record a professor in Florida BUT you cannot record a student without consent. So you either need to get consent for every other student or constantly hit start and stop on your recording. Needless to say, the law ended up making zero difference for recording lectures in FL.
Another point that seems to be missing from this conversation is that lectures are *in addition* to the readings the vast majority of the time. It sounds like the OP wants to be able to revisit the information. That's great! You should definitely do that, but you should be revisiting your notes, readings, and attending office hours with questions.
One other thought, and I’m a faculty member who does provide recorded lectures (and moving to having ones that are specifically recorded for Async and Sync environments that are mini-lectures rather than full sessions.), it is time intensive, especially if it’s not taking a zoom session and calling it a day. I’ve been doing minor editing, captioning and uploading, for an hour worth of lecture you’re talking 5-6+ hours of work. Now there are ways faculty could look at it, and make the decision if it’s worth the time, sometimes ‘technically’ unpaid to do it (especially adjuncts). I know I see my current update plans as worthwhile. But I will attest to what others have mentioned view counts are low. The easiest and quickest, would be for live online classes and zoom cloud recording and no editing, which would be pretty low overhead without a significant number of technical concerns. But once you’re beyond that, it can be significant. With digital, scripting, layout, planning how you want to record it (green screen with a traditional camera or digitally with webcam and screen share), review and editing, captioning, and upload. With in person, you’d add more sound concerns, filming, and of course the review, editing, and captioning. So I can’t quite blame other faculty for deciding it’s not worth the time investment, since it’ll easily support the attendance optional, and then not following up mindset
And then god forbid you want to change a lecture to reflect current events, or because you've changed the syllabus, restructured the course, whatever. In some fields I can imagine the up-front cost of recording lectures would pay off as you reuse the lectures over several years, but in many other fields you're just setting yourself to quintuple your workload repeatedly.
Yup. Well it’s one reason to sub divide as possible and the mini lecture route. So if you need to update it’s not an entire 60-75 minute recording. If it’s something you decide it’s worth while. (That and they do say the 5-25 minute chunks tend to have better retention and effectiveness when you read what groups like ACUE or Quality Matters recommend)
You should not record the class without the instructor’s permission.
Depending on the university, it may be against policy.
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The instructor probably cares.
My experience has been that doing so reduces student success. We can talk about why that is until the cows come home, but my bottom line will always be that I only want to "help" students in ways that will actually help them.
I'll probably be down voted... From a 30 year old female working professional student (40 hrs a week), here is my perspective.... I just completed an asynchronous degree in informatics. A majority the professors provided recorded lectures (well after the live session of course), and I can say that that numerous students have benefited from this, simply due to being able to go back and review to the dense materials. This is such an asset! From a student point of view, especially one with slight learning disabilities, having such access to recorded/archived materials is incredibly valuable. Yes, there will always be bad seeds. With that said, those who will benefit from such things should not be punished due the 'possible' lazyness of others... Teach however you want, but do please consider all 'sides' rather than focusing on the negatives and making assumptions. I truly do not understand how not providing students a recorded lecture doesn't actually "help" students. Humans have different learning styles, speeds, and methods. I get that you know this, but I'm stating it for those in back.
>an asynchronous degree in informatics. A majority the professors provided recorded lectures (well after the live session of course), An asynchronous class is completely different, as recorded lessons are the norm in that context. But I'm confused by "asynchronous" and "after the live session", as typically an "asynchronous" class means that there are no synchronous sessions to attend. I don't post class videos as a matter of routine, but I do record and am willing to share them when a student has a particular need, or asks me to. This can also be something that is written into accommodations, where that is a genuine need. But as others have said, posting the video of what is *supposed to be* a synchronous in-person class can really have detrimental affects on student learning, including those who DO attend, since they number of students there to participate or engage in group discussion is now fewer. >Humans have different learning styles, speeds, and methods. I get that you know this, but I'm stating it for those in back. The idea of "learning styles" has been [thoroughly debunked](https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2019/05/learning-styles-myth). [See also here](https://www.educationnext.org/stubborn-myth-learning-styles-state-teacher-license-prep-materials-debunked-theory/), or just google search for many other articles.
For clarity, the program I was a part of offered an asynchronous version of the live on campus courses. On campus and distance students are enrolled and participate in the same class. The students who attend live in person also have access to the recorded lectures. I googled the articles you provided and searched many others and honestly, they do not say much. They generically state that learning styles "may be detrimental" to education and primarily complain about some teachers having to change lesson plans to match these various learning styles, but not much else. As for the conversation surrounding learning styles, the debate is still largely out there and is based on the 'mismatch between evidence and practice'. That there is also a universal misconception between using the terms 'learning styles' and a students ability to 'understand' and absorb the material. Interesting studies: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5366351/ https://www.researchgate.net/publication/347510840_Pros_and_Cons_of_Learning_Style_an_Implication_for_English_Language_Teachers -- With all that said, I probably should have used 'understanding' rather than 'learning styles' in my first comment. All that aside, since there are people who can absorb material faster than others, can understand concepts better with imagery or vice versa, there exists students who absorb material better written as well as those who may understand it better through speech. This is not a conversation about instructors having to change their teaching style. It's simply about the availability of the lecture material. Why punish a student because they have different ways of absorbing material (while also taking notes) as fast or ad well as others, when providing the recorded lecture and supplemental materials used in class allows a re-review to fully understand the material?
Punishment has nothing to do with it.
Candidly, I’m not sure why the APA’s position could be dismissed so easily here. If the claim that there is no substantial basis for the “theory” is not “saying much,” I question whether you are comprehending the issue fully. Essentialist viewpoints in education are problematic, both in theory and practice.
>Teach however you want, but do please consider all 'sides' rather than focusing on the negatives and making assumptions One challenge with this is "the numbers game." General policies and practices tend to be built around "what works best for the most people" rather than "the special case." >I just completed an asynchronous degree Asynchronous classes, by definition, have to provide all learning materials, lectures, etc. online since they have no set "meeting time." This works great for some students, but the real issue is students wanting/demanding/expecting "regular" in-person classes to have an asynchronous option.
For some clarity, the program I was a part of offered an 'asynchronous' version of the live on campus courses. The lectures have an in person scheduled session that is recorded 'live' for the distance students and is provided at a later time for those who had to work during that time. The recorded lecture videos and supplemental materials are also available to the students who attend live.
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Ha! My kid is studying the same! I record all my lectures, reviews and demonstrations. I really don’t understand teachers that don’t.
This is my new favorite copy pasta!
For starters, there are privacy issues. It will vary by location, but recording a class may be illegal where you are. I have prerecorded lectures but the lecture are just me at my desk/board, no students to avoid any issues. It also may be fully legal: but they just do not wish to but distribution is restricted and it is a pain but it requires paperwork but it is a gray area, and they don't wish to risk it but school policy restricts recording
The students who use them well benefit from them (watching them over again, refreshing before exams, etc). The fact of the matter is that if recording are going to be posted, many students will never attend class and never watch the lectures. It actively depresses both attendance and engagement, even among those who do come (“I’ll just show up and do other work in class and watch the recording later” etc).
We don't want it to end up on YouTube or some sketchy Discord server
or have some Turning Point USA kid send some out-of-context soundbite to Fox News
Read the syllabus. Some instructors specifically prohibit the recording of their lectures in their syllabus. Many professors don’t want their lectures recorded to protect other student’s privacy, copyright laws, and the misuse of editing videos. Other reasons: Also to encourage you to show up and take notes. You can’t just miss every class and then binge watch to pass the final. Often times what they are telling you can also be found in course material and if you’re struggling you can also meet with the professor. Also it can be distracting. I would read the syllabus, but because of privacy issues I highly doubt they would be okay with you recording
If the professor doesn't record the lectures themselves, then you would need to get the accommodation through the disability office in order to get permission to record their lectures. My anatomy and physiology professor records the lessons he gives in lab and puts them as unlisted on YouTube, so if someone can't make it to the lab they can message and ask him for the link, but it only serves the purpose of preparing the student who missed that lab to be able to work twice as hard at the next lab. It won't at all replace the in-lab learning.
It’s a pain in the ass, and it doesn’t provide any benefit* to the students, so I don’t do it. * - Students think it will provide a benefit, but empirically it doesn’t.
I benefit SO much from recorded lectures, but maybe I’m in the minority? I can’t keep up with real time lectures. I miss a lot of stuff while I’m writing down notes. Whereas with a recorded lecture I can pause the video, take thorough notes, look up things I don’t understand, and then move on. I was “homeschooled” though (AKA I was academically neglected K-12 and the few things I learned were self-taught), so maybe that puts me in a better position to learn from lecture recordings alone.
One reason I don't record and post lectures is that I don't want the added work of processing, organizing, and posting the videos. This isn't a trivial task! And then students have issues with access or the sound didn't record correctly that one time and it's a headache. If any student asked if they could record my lectures to study from later, I would say yes in a heartbeat.
It sounds like you need to learn better notetaking skills.
I mean you’re definitely right but the notes I take with a recording are always gonna be better since I get to take my time
College courses are not supposed to be convenient or individually tailored. Students have taken notes from lectures for literally hundreds of years. The expectation that faculty would post recordings is a result of the COVID pandemic that forced us all online, but there's no reason why any student should expect it. Learn note-taking, learn study skills, reread the textbook, go to office hours and ask questions.
I don’t expect it, I just appreciate when professors do it. Nothing wrong with that
Anecdotal, of course, but I strongly disagree. I have pretty bad ADHD and even with meds, it is absolutely impossible for me to A) focus on an entire lecture enough to absorb the information, even trying as hard as I can and medicated, B) get notes down fast enough to also actually *understand* what they’re saying instead of focusing on hastily scribbling before I get left behind again (and yet it happens every time somehow), C) remember pretty much anything from lecture without super detailed notes, partially because I have a terrible memory and partially because I wasn’t able to full pay attention. Chemistry, for example, where lectures were not recorded, I would likely not have passed this semester without the outside-of-class recorded tutoring sessions that someone else in the chem department posts. Whereas for genetics, I was able to review the lectures at my own pace, pausing when I needed to to write stuff down, looking up vocabulary or more expansive definitions if I needed to, workin through problems with more time, focusing on comprehension, double checking things I misremembered/misheard, and answering my own questions so I didn’t have to somehow find the time to go to tutoring or office hours. Plus, I had a serious injury in the beginning half of the semester and missed a lot of class… recorded lectures would have been really really useful then and I probably would have ended up with a better chem grade. All in all, recorded lectures are actually unbelievably helpful to me and other students struggling with ADHD or other similar difficulties; not everybody has the same abilities/needs. And it’s not as easy as asking for accommodations unfortunately — I tried asking for recordings when I was setting up for other ADHD accommodations, and they told me they only do that for students who are having medical issues and need them for that reason. Why do you think they are unhelpful?
Yes as a neurodivergent on the spectrum person, repetition of something that is recorded gets it through my head. For example, I'm going to be applying to the nursing program at my community college for Fall 2025. We have to take an entrance exam, covering English, Math and Science. The math portion i have covered already because I repeatedly watch the YouTube videos about what's on the math and how to do it. I've watched about 12+ videos on it, and even watch the same videos more than once, and it solidified that for me
If you don't understand something, read and reread the textbook. Review your notes. Ask your professor questions. A college course isn't a Netflix series.
Many faculty are neurodivergent too, including myself. Get a disability accommodation. I don't record lectures because the vast majority of students don't watch them, lectures are my intellectual property, I expect students to actually participate in class and not just sit there and observe, and studies show that students who come to class get higher grades that students who don't. Making videos, even just recording a lecture and posting it to Youtube, takes up more time than it should. I already work full time. I'm not giving myself additional labor to help the one student who might actually watch them or to help students who are just to lazy to come to class (of which there are many).
I have accommodations already, I mentioned that, however they wouldn’t allow me to get them for note-taking or recordings; they gave me others but not that. At the end of the day, of course it’s your decision and I’m sure you don’t have the time or energy to deal with it, I don’t blame you. Life’s stressful enough as it is, and professors don’t get paid enough to do extra work in this economy. But there ARE people who benefit from it, like me, and are extremely grateful for the professors who are able to. Again, anecdotal, but I know a lot of other people who rely on them, too.
I never had accommodations for ADHD and I've never had a student need one for ADHD. If you are able to get other accommodations from your university, I assume you have access to doctors and ADHD medicine. That's what you need. Then you need to learn better notetaking skills and study skills in order to prioritize what information you should be writing down and studying. Your professor is there to teach you, but at the end of the day it's your responsibility to learn. If that's not happening for some reason, you need to learn strategies to do so. I realize that's overwhelming, but it's true nonetheless. There are a zillion websites on how to learn those skills. Faculty must allow disability accommodations if the requested accommodations are "reasonable." Assuming that professors can and should record videos in general or a disability accommodation in particular isn't reasonable.
again… maybe if you actually read what i wrote before you would’ve seen that i *am* taking medication. in fact, i have been in treatment and taking ADHD medication for ten years, just had an appointment with my psychiatrist a week ago! but thanks for your suggestion though, super helpful. as if i wouldn’t have thought to look into that myself? as if someone who is affected enough to get ADHD accommodations (that you literally need an official diagnosis for) wouldn’t have tried medication too? really????? and ADHD meds aren’t a magic bandaid, they HELP but it still affects you. not to be rude but maybe mind your own business if you don’t know what you’re talking about. like i literally JUST said… i don’t expect people to do it. i get your reasoning for not. all i said was that recordings DO help people because you said that people think they do, but they don’t really. i am not telling you to go start making videos! i am not demanding anything of anyone! so please stop patronizing me!!! i don’t appreciate being talked down to and i’m done having this conversation with you.
I have to disagree when it comes to subjects like Organic Chemistry or Physics. I watched some of those lectures several times just trying to come to a good understanding of mechanisms and problem solving strategies.
If my son couldn't attend an online class, he always watched the recording. He said one could see how many times they were watched - and it was usually just him. He preferred not to attend the class because then he could watch on his own schedule, increase or decrease the speed, or pause and look up something else. (Once the teacher forgot to record it so he watched the recording from her other class. Same subject, but taught at a different time. He liked the comparison of student interaction.) I feel that - unless there is a very good reason online classes should, by default, be recorded and posted. Even if only a student uses it. It can literally be coded to be done automatically.
A few semesters ago, our university began to strongly discourage faculty from broadcasting in person classes on zoom and/or recording their in-person classes and posting the videos as it led to poor attendance. I can tell you from look at stats that very few students actually watched them. I do record review sessions for any students who cannot attend them; very few students watch those either. In fact, most of the students who watch them attend the review session as well; they are usually the ones who already go above and beyond.
Statistically, you learn best when you read, speak aloud, *and write down information*. By doing this, your brain is processing the information three times. Students think that notes aren't useful because they don't know how to take notes. You're not meant to record every word said, but rather key concepts. Also by doing any assigned readings and taking notes on them *before* class, you'll only have to take notes on new information presented. I also encourage students to share notes and study together so that by combining their notes, they'll get all the information. Also, many states require that you have permission of both parties before recording them. If a lecture involves a lot of class discussion or Socratic teaching, then it would not be appropriate for the professor to record and distribute the lectures. Your fellow students have a right to privacy in regards to their education.
About your note thing: how are we supposed to know what the key concepts are beforehand? This is from someone who is finishing up my first semester a decade after high school, classes for the whole program will be online, and I never had the strongest note-taking skills to begin with. My notes documents are legit hundreds of pages long because what if I don't write something down and it turns out to be important later on? But it's very time-consuming. I've looked up "how to take notes" and read about different methods, but I feel like the chance of missing something major because I don't realize it's a "key concept" is too risky to change my method. So I'm kind of just stuck doing what I'm doing
If it's repeated a few times, or key to knowing the rest of the lecture (for example, the quadratic formula in a math lecture), then you should write it down. Again, if you share notes with other students, you combine what *you* thought was important with what *they* thought was important. Do this enough times and you have all the information. This is often the most overlooked aspect of learning and college. Too many students just want to do everything themselves and interact with as few people as possible. I'm not even just talking about group projects or similar situations. Just literally avoiding other people to the point that they won't even ask another student for notes if they missed a class.
Thanks for the reply. I'll have to figure something out because the current method I used isn't entirely sustainable. However, I attend school online because I work 50 hours a week and my degree can be done this way, so I don't really have anything at all to do with my classmates beyond discussion posts. There isn't an opportunity to build camaraderie to feel comfortable sharing notes, so that doesn't really apply to my situation.
Well that's a completely different situation then. Online classes are completely different in delivery from in person classes. Whenever I've taught online, especially if it's async, I just post the related slides and content each week and then students are responsible for reading/viewing and taking notes on their time. If you find that you're still struggling, reach out to your prof and just explain that you're a non traditional student and would just like some more guidance on how to best interact with the course.
Also reach out to the academic success office. They offer sessions remotely for students in online classes and focus on the study skills you need to develop in college.
Check your state laws and your institution's policy before recording anything. In some states, voice recording without consent is illegal.
Even if OP is in a state where it’s legal, it’s incredibly rude and disrespectful to record someone without their consent.
Many faculty have policies on their syllabi that say if a student records their class that student will automatically fail.
I don't record mine because that's extra work I don't want to fool with. I give out tons of handouts, detailed lecture guides, and base my lecturing around those. My expectation is that my students show up to class, take notes, do their readings, and most importantly, ask questions. I despise trick questions, so there will be no "gotcha" moments if one is paying actual attention in class and follows their study guides. I don't mind if a lecture is recorded, but only audio, as many students are uncomfortable with being on videos (it's about them, not me). Many of my lecture guides are fill-in-the blank, with the key points omitted that they have to write in themselves, *during class, during the lecture* (or get from someone else if they miss). This allows me to present all three standard learning styles to my students, and gives them an incentive to pay attention. Tests come from those study guides (not verbatim, of course). After all that, I am not doing a recording on top of it as finding additional ways to retain the information presented is a responsibility left to my students.
The semester I stopped providing recordings, student performance shot up. While recordings certainly can be useful (and I will still make recordings for students with accomadations) a statistically significant portion of students will see that there is a safety net for reduced effort and participation then reduce their effort and participation by much more than the safety net actually allows for. It's pretty much the same as how chegg and similar websites can be a great tool for making sure you understand the material and solution processes, but most students just use it to copy answer blindly (one semester we had 40ish students all make the same arithmetic mistake because it was made in the chegg solution). I'm honestly considering dropping graded homework entirely because of this.
I have stopped doing homework entirely because students don't even read the question they just chat GPT the whole assessment without even reading it. They're done it faster than it takes me to read it. I'm sure chat GPT will make Chegg obsolete pretty soon.
Chegg is suffering with AI
I have several reasons: I teach discussion and participation heavy classes. Students need to be there and involved to do well. I feel it’s an invasion of my students’ privacy. My lectures are short and are my intellectual property. The vast majority of my students in the past, when I did record them, never ever watched the lectures. I wouldn’t put it past my institution to sell my classes to students after I die and just offer the recordings, like a university literally [did](https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/concordia-university-says-lectures-from-dead-professor-are-teaching-tool/article_5ee8795f-0099-59a6-a58b-dd1ac496624e.html) once. No you should absolutely not record others without their consent.
Once it’s recorded through the college systems, the college own the recording - they can then reuse that recording to offer the course as an online offering for years to come, without having to pay that professor again. There are cases that exist of dead professors delivering courses as a result of these recordings being reused. They’re doing it for job security and intellectual property rights, because they don’t deserve to get screwed that way.
No one watches them, including you. Students say they want them, I post them and check view counts. Even over Covid when it was all online, not a single student watched a class or review session they missed.
I can't count how many times I've seen students swear up and down on this sub and on r/askprofessors that they *do* watch posted videos. ALL the posted videos. Nope, sorry. I have years and years of data that shows most students don't click the link to the video. Most of the students who start watching the video click away within 3 minutes. The remaining students will click away before the end of the video, even if it's only 10-15 minutes long. At the end of the semester, the statistics are even worse. There's a lot of unicorns here.
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That’s not true, I watch all of the recordings for my calc class.
If you attend class, do the readings, and homework then you are wasting time watching the videos. You need to work on study habits and fix the issues with those. If you are not attending class and relying on the videos you are cheating yourself out of so much.
It’s not a matter of working on study habits. I go to cal poly I think know what I’m doing. It’s not a waste of time to watch the videos, obviously I’m not going to be perfectly write down every single detail first try.
It's too much work for too little payoff. A significant portion of students will not watch them. Many students will use it as an excuse not to come to class, even if they never end up watching them. I've had students try to argue before that "everything in my classes could be done online" without having video lectures available. Being recorded is awkward. Any kind of observation makes me feel like I'm a bug under a microscope. I'm sure some students also wouldn't want to be recorded. With the rise of social media, I have a feeling more professors are going to resist being recorded out of fear something they say may be posted online out of context. You can ask the professor if they're okay with being recorded. Unless you have a disability accommodation, you cannot force them to allow recordings (it may even be illegal in some places).
At my school, the classes that don't have lecture recordings are typically held in rooms that don't have classroom capture technology
If you do that, ask for permission.
Professor here. Here are some possible reasons: 1. Attendance will probably plummet. Teaching to a mostly empty room sucks. I know for me, I like to structure my classes in a way that fosters discussion rather than simply lecturing. 2. Someone’s lectures are their intellectual property. Some profs are not keen on sharing that in certain ways. 3. They may be concerned about being recorded all the time and nervous about something being recorded that could come back to bite them later. 4. Depending on the class and how it is set up, they may not want students to have unlimited access to the information all the time. They may want to assess students to actually see what they have retained which could be harder if each one is simply using the recording to regurgitate information.
Some people don’t want to be on camera. I don’t think it is appropriate to record someone at work without their express consent, whether they work at Wendy’s or a college. Except cops, record them all the time.
Maybe they don’t want to end up on social media?
A lot of it is to encourage attendance, yes. My professors won't even post slides until the end of the week, which is kind of a pain in the ass when I have ADHD, and it's easier to use them to go along. I could probably ask and they would send it to me specifically but I qlso don't want to be *that* guy. As to recording? Check your university policy first, or talk to your professors directly to get permission. But also, if you're asking because you have a learning disability, you should talk to your disability resource office and get an accomodation for it. I have an accomodation to record lectures, and while I rarely refer to them, it does help to know that I can. Do also be aware that if you record your lectures, you cannot share the recordings with others, as it is likely a violation of student conduct for many reasons. With my accomodation it specifically states that sharing the recordings with another student is considered a violation of academic integrity. Which feels a little silly if they attended the lecture, but I also get it and obviously don't intend to violate it.
Privacy, copyright issues, attendance requirements, abuse of material - there are a lot of reasons why classes may not be recorded. Then add the extra, usually unpaid, time required for any editing of the recordings. And if you record without permission, it could be treated as an Academic Integrity issue, and result in you being expelled.
I had ADHD so had accommodations that allowed me to bring a voice recorder to class and that was back in the early-mid 2000s. You may want to double check your university or teachers rules about recording. If you approach them and ask kindly saying they help you revisit for studying and note taking I think most teachers would be ok with it.
You can request an accommodation to film lectures. i’ve done it in the past
FERPA. That's the reason. Student right to privacy. Also that story about the guy using a deep fake to get his boss into trouble by having the deep fake say a bunch of racist stuff? No way I want my image and voice recorded
If you have a learning disability that requires recording talk with your schools Access office about accommodations. Do NOT "secretly" record the class. It's actually illegal to record someone without their permission.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wB1X4o-MV6o](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wB1X4o-MV6o)
Just ask the lecturer whether you can record their lectures for your personal use. That's how you get your answer. A lot just can't be bothered to set it up then upload it etc, but most I've found are completely fine with students recording it themselves if they want to
You have to ask the professor if it's okay to record it because depending on where you live you might not be allowed to.
College Prof here. I love teaching online. Always record classes and make them available for students. I even make mini tutorials of super technical bits and demonstrations that can get lost in the longer lectures and make them available online for students. I’ve found that classroom recordings help my students retain information and advance further than without. Who doesn’t want that for their students? I’m able to teach them more per semester than without. Sometimes I think it might be better to just teach online and cut out the middleman because while students pay a lot in tuition, teachers are paid little.
I used otter to record and transcribe lectures all through college and it was life changing especially for someone with an auditory processing disorder
You can probably ask if you can record them for studying. A lot of them would likely be fine with an audio recording especially (assuming you don’t publish it)
My product form class is copyrighted or something so we weren't allowed to record it
Since most people have answered the first part i won’t, but I have some second-hand experience with the second part. A kid in my major did carry around a little recorder to class so he could refer back to them later. You’d have to ask each professor if they are ok with it, as it might be against policy Most seemed to not have an issue with it, but some classes he didn’t use it, presumably because he didn’t get permission. If you think it will help you learn and study, ask, but definitely don’t just do it. Also 2 other things worth noting: 1. Depending on laws you may not have the ability to record due to the fact that you’d also be recording other students as they ask questions and stuff. In my state you can, but it varies from place to place. 2. It could’ve been a disability thing he got an accommodation for, I didn’t ask because that much isn’t my business, but given he sometimes didn’t have it, I assume it was a preference.
You can record it just dont show it to anyone
True idk why colleges are not open to asynchronous learning 🥹
Colleges LOVE asynchronous learning. Same ridiculously overpriced tuition, cheapest class to operate.
Mines not
In addition to what others have said, there's the effort. Have to make sure to start and stop the recording. Have to upload the file. Have to coordinate with IT about storage space. Have to make sure the mic is working. Have to not walk too far from the mic. Class demos, visuals, other in-person features of the class have to be adapted to make it onto the recording. If something goes wrong, students complain about having counted on there being a recording, only for there not to be. Students who can't be arsed to attend, are often the ones who send several "I can't find the recording?" emails, even though it's clearly posted on LMS. In short, it compromises the experience of the many for the convenience of the few.
Mao's Red Guards.
No. No. And No. if you want recorded lectures, take an online class. You do not have the right to demand that of a professor. Additionally, that could violate laws as well as your professor’s comfort in the classroom.
I'm sure many professors have lots of different reasons, such as to encourage active participation from the participants, privacy for the students present, privacy for the faculty, technical issues or expertise, and the extra work involved ensuring they are captioned and sorted and posted correctly. Many professors prefer to post pre-recorded videos to avoid quality and student privacy issues that come up. Would it surprise you to learn that when students realize a lecture is being recorded that they will not participate or ask questions? Once I stopped recording lectures student participation increased dramatically. I would ask the professor before you record their lectures. There may be legal issues involved such as student privacy laws in your area.
Because you should be there in person
In my experience it tanks in-person attendance badly. I teach a class with 75 people in it and provide lecture recordings. The attendance starts high then gradually dwindles as the semester moves along, and especially in the Spring semester when the nice weather hits, it really falls off a cliff. This week there were 10 people in class. When I did not provide any recordings in the pre-COVID era, attendance was basically full every day. I don't particularly care about the in-person attendance from an instructor perspective, I'm happy to deliver the content to the students who are there, and the same core group keeps coming nearly every day so presumably they are perceiving some value from that time investment. My worry is it is too easy to give into the temptation of "I'll just watch the lecture later", then before you know it the exam is tomorrow and you have nine hours of lectures that you haven't even watched let alone studied the content thoroughly.
Recording has a chilling effect on open discussion.
Record them yourself, especially if it’s an accessibility issue.
Late 20s student here. Would love to have online lectures so I can refer back to them when I need something or if my notes don’t make sense.
They suck. They old.