CTL
Centre for Teaching and Learning
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Make the most of recorded
lectures
Overview ___________________________________________________ 1
5 tips for learning from lectures in general _________________________ 2
5 tips for revising from recorded lectures___________________________ 3
5 tips for learning from video and managing the cognitive load _________ 3
5 features of the Panopto video player to help ______________________ 5
Reflect on your process, ask others about theirs ____________________ 5
How do we know _____________________________________________ 5
Overview
Having access to recorded lectures is very popular with students but many
don't get the most out of it. This guide outlines some key ideas you can use to
learn better from recorded lectures.
If you just want to learn how to use the video player better, you can go straight
to the Panopto guide for students.
To get the most out of the recorded lectures available to you, consider some
of these evidence-based tips and ideas.
Five things to think about:
1. What's the purpose of lectures for learning?
2. Why and how you should attend lectures even when they're recorded?
3. How you can integrate recorded lectures into the revision process?
4. How you can maximise the time you put in by active and constructive
engagement?
5. What are the features of the video player that will help make engaging
with the videos easier? (see Panopto guide for more)
Seven tips to keep in mind:
1. Don't give up on the benefits of attending the lecture live with others
2. Schedule time to watch the lecture recording by yourself or with others
3. Pause and skip back frequently to take notes and make bookmarks
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4. Learn to navigate the video using slides and transcript
5. Many people like to listen at higher or lower speed - try how well this
works for you
6. Don't take notes word for word, summarise each point and the whole
lecture in your own words
7. Ask questions of the lecturer and other students
5 tips for learning from lectures in general
You should go to lectures. Students who attend lectures are more successful
at learning than those who don't. But do not confuse attending the lecture with
learning. Attending is better than not attending but you also need to engage.
Here five ways of making the most out of your lectures:
1. Don't go into your lectures cold. Find out a little bit about the topic.
Read the readings. Write down questions you are expecting the lecture
to answer.
2. Take notes in any way that helps you. But don't think you have to take
notes word for word. Try to summarise as you write notes, consider
using mind maps, concept maps or outlines.
3. Ask and answer questions. Take the opportunity to ask questions
during live lectures or online. Whenever possible, try to answer other
people’s questions. That will help you clarify your understanding.
4. Write a summary of key points after the lecture without consulting
your notes to check how much you've retained. Often, you will realise
that you're able to write down less than you thought. Compare your
summary with somebody else's and reconcile any differences.
5. Follow up by doing the readings, working through problems, etc. For
every hour you spend in a lecture, you should spend at least 2 more
studying.
Remember, lectures are an important part of the learning process but you still
need to spend time making what you heard your own.
Attending a lecture gives you a chance to focus, block time when you're doing
nothing else, and be with others doing the same activity. These are powerful
signals for learning.
But you can never say, I've attended a lecture, I've learned. Most of the actual
learning will happen before and after the lecture, as you're planning, reflecting,
taking notes, or revising. Make sure all of these activities are a part of your
routine.
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5 tips for revising from recorded lectures
All students like the idea of having recorded lectures. But we know from the
view numbers that most of them don't watch most of the videos. This is partly
because it seems like such a daunting task to go through so much material
again. And even if you only go to watch a part of the video, it's much harder to
skim for gist or to scan to get to the most important parts. Here are some tips.
1. Learn with others: If you're planning to rewatch the entire lecture, do
not do it alone. Schedule time with others. Like a movie night. This
will make it more likely you will actually do it. But more importantly, you
will be able to check your understanding with others. Agree on rules on
how often you want to stop.
2. Pause and rewind: After watching, think about how often you paused,
fast forwarded, or rewound the video. All of these activities are signs
that you are actively engaging with the content. And research shows
that you will learn more. This is a great advantage of recorded lectures.
3. Change the speed: It is easy to train yourself to listen at an increased
speed. You can go through the same lecture in less time. Some people
say that it helps them focus. This works best in quiet environments with
headphones on. But don't be afraid to slow down for certain parts.
Maybe English isn't your first language or the topic relies on a lot of
technical language. Those are some situations when you will learn more
if you listen at a lower speed.
4. Annotate the video: Did you know you can bookmark parts of the
video? You can also take notes in the video and share those with
others. Ask and answer questions.
5. Watch strategically: Often, you only want to rewatch certain parts of
the video. Take advantage of the search feature that will find what was
said as well as text on slides or use the slide view to navigate.
Following these tips will help you avoid binge watching your lectures at
the last minute. This is the least effective way of learning difficult concepts
because you are increasing the cognitive load. See next section for more
tips on how to manage this.
5 tips for learning from video and managing the
cognitive load
Compared to reading, video can put more demands on your working memory.
Working memory is how much you can keep in your mind at once to do mental
operations. Everybody's working memory is limited. There are only so
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many chunks of information it can hold. But the chunks you put in working
memory can be very large and rich. That's how mnemonic devices or
metaphors work. You associate something that's already rich in meaning with
something with which you don't have any meaningful association. So
paradoxically, you can remember a new thing better by putting more things in
your memory with it.
Video is a continuous stream of sounds and images which can put an extra
load on your working memory. This is called cognitive load. But because
video is also rich and full of useful signals, it can give your working memory
the richness it needs to process bigger chunks of information.
Here are some tips for managing your cognitive load while watching the video.
1. Reduce distractions: This sounds obvious. Distractions make you lose
focus, so, of course, you should avoid them. But they also saturate your
working memory. That's why you may find it better to watch a video with
headphones on.
2. Build up more background knowledge: If every bit of information is
new, it puts a higher load on your working memory. That's why it's so
useful to learn something about the subject before watching the video.
Read short bios of people mentioned, look up their pictures. Try the
formulas or watch the experiments online before the lecture. Find
related videos online.
3. Watch in smaller chunks: Lectures are scheduled in hours because of
the limits of time and space. But you don't have to watch them in one
go. Take a break after a meaningful chunk every 10-20 minutes. Pause
to do the exercises, work out a problem, look up an answer to a
question posed in the video.
4. Notice the confusion break: Often, there's a point in a lecture when
understanding turns into confusion. That's when too many new things
combine and you can't keep them in your working memory at once any
more. That's the time to pause and go back. Write down the difficult
concepts, work out a technical problem, draw a concept map. Don't just
power through.
5. Seek out the challenging parts and formulate questions: Things
that are easy to understand make us feel good and are comfortable or
even pleasant to watch. Not understanding something, on the other
hand, is stressful and often makes you question yourself. Use those
feelings as a signal to rewatch the parts of the video you find more
difficult to understand. There is no shame in watching a complicated
explanation or exercise assignment multiple times. But don't just leave it
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at that, use that to formulate questions to ask of your peers or of the
lecturer online or in person.
5 features of the Panopto video player to help
The Panopto video player has many features that are very much underused.
Make sure you've tried them all. But also check in with yourself after a while if
there's a feature you wanted to use but are not taking advantage of.
See the Panopto guide for more details about:
1. Embedded videos vs video with full interface
2. Modifying speed of videos
3. Searching and navigating through video
4. Making notes and bookmarks
5. Using captions and transcripts
Reflect on your process, ask others about theirs
Learning is a skill and you can get better at it. One way to improve at any
skill is to pause and reflect on your practice. How well is what you're doing
working for you? Are there areas where you struggle and a change could
help? And most importantly keep track of what you're doing and how you're
progressing. Do not rely on your memory. Keep a learning diary.
You are not alone. Make talking to other students a part of your reflection.
Ask them how they study, what works for them. Share what you do. See if you
can learn from each other but remember almost everything works for
someone and nothing works for everyone. So experiment with what works for
you.
There are many people online sharing their process. Take advantage of the
advice but always consult more than one source to get more points of view.
How do we know
The advice on this page is based on a body of good evidence.
The importance of attending lectures for success has been shown in a
number of studies. A large meta analysis of 68 studies in 2010 showed a
strong link between attendance and grades (Credé, Roch, and Kieszczynka
2010). A more recent systematic review has shown that 85% of 27 studies
conducted in the human biosciences reported a positive association between
lecture attendance and academic success (Doggrell 2020).
The importance of reducing cognitive load while watching videos has been
replicated in a number of studies. Clark and Mayer (2016) summarised 30
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years of research in this area as the 10 principles of multimedia learning. One
of the key insights of their work is that minimising cognitive load is especially
beneficial for beginners. They also show the benefit of viewers controlling the
video playback.
Memory (and working memory in particular) is still an active area of research
and there are many unknowns. But the key insight that you can overcome its
limits by increasing the size of chunks goes back to a famous paper by G. A.
Miller (1956). More recently Anders Ericsson has leveraged the idea to help
understand expert performance (Ericsson and Pool 2016). Ericsson's
framework also stresses the importance of reflection on the learning process
for improvement and the importance of focusing on areas of difficulty.
The benefits of active engagement, writing summaries and working
questions out with your peers has been summarised in the ICAP framework
by Chi and Wylie (2014). It draws on a number of studies showing that simple
behaviours such as stopping and pausing a video can be a signal of more
active engagement that leads to better learning. This is then magnified if
students create something new - such as summaries or mindmaps and then
have a discussion about it with others (Chi and Menekse 2015).
Using concept maps for working out difficult concepts has been found to
improve understanding in a number of studies and the positive association
was confirmed by two systematic reviews (Nesbit and Adesope 2006; Hay,
Kinchin, and Lygo‐Baker 2008).
Research on how speed of playback impacts comprehension is still too new
for a systematic review but early studies indicate that with practice people
listening at a speed of up 2x can maintain comprehension (Nagahama and
Morita 2018). Another recent study also suggested that students who watch at
higher speeds 1.25x watch more videos (Lang et al. 2020). However, there is
also one study that showed that beginners who were asked to watch videos at
higher speeds without preparation did less well on a test (Song et al. 2018).
Much of this research only confirms what is known from the study skills
literature. Stella Cotrell’s Study Skills Handbook (2019) is a very readable
overview full of useful tips on how you can improve your learning.
References
Chi, Michelene T. H., and Ruth Wylie. 2014. ‘The ICAP Framework: Linking
Cognitive Engagement to Active Learning Outcomes’. Educational
Psychologist 49 (4): 219–43. https://doi.org/10.1080/00461520.2014.965823.
Chi, Michelene T.H., and Muhsin Menekse. 2015. ‘Dialogue Patterns in Peer
Collaboration That Promote Learning’. In Socializing Intelligence Through
Academic Talk and Dialogue, edited by Lauren B. Resnick, Christa S. C.
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Asterhan, and Sherice N. Clarke, 263–74. American Educational Research
Association. https://doi.org/10.3102/978-0-935302-43-1_21.
Clark, Ruth Colvin, and Richard E Mayer. 2016. E-Learning and the Science
of Instruction: Proven Guidelines for Consumers and Designers of Multimedia
Learning.
Cottrell, Stella. 2019. The Study Skills Handbook. Fifth edition. Macmillan
Study Skills. London: Macmillan International Higher Education.
Credé, Marcus, Sylvia G. Roch, and Urszula M. Kieszczynka. 2010. ‘Class
Attendance in College: A Meta-Analytic Review of the Relationship of Class
Attendance With Grades and Student Characteristics’. Review of Educational
Research 80 (2): 272–95. https://doi.org/10.3102/0034654310362998.
Doggrell, Sheila. 2020. ‘A Systematic Review of the Relationship Between
Lecture Attendance and Academic Outcomes for Students Studying the
Human Biosciences’. International Journal of Innovation in Science and
Mathematics Education 28 (1). https://doi.org/10.30722/IJISME.28.01.005.
Ericsson, Anders, and Robert Pool. 2016. Peak: Secrets from the New
Science of Expertise. London: The Bodley Head.
Hay, David, Ian Kinchin, and Simon Lygo‐Baker. 2008. ‘Making Learning
Visible: The Role of Concept Mapping in Higher Education’. Studies in Higher
Education 33 (3): 295–311. https://doi.org/10.1080/03075070802049251.
Lang, David, Guanling Chen, Kathy Mirzaei, and Andreas Paepcke. 2020. ‘Is
Faster Better? A Study of Video Playback Speed’. In Proceedings of the Tenth
International Conference on Learning Analytics & Knowledge, 260–69. LAK
’20. New York, NY, USA: Association for Computing Machinery.
https://doi.org/10.1145/3375462.3375466.
Miller, George A. 1956. ‘The Magical Number Seven, plus or Minus Two:
Some Limits on Our Capacity for Processing Information’. Psychological
Review 63 (2): 81–97. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0043158.
Nagahama, Toru, and Yusuke Morita. 2018. ‘Analysis of Learning
Effectiveness with High-Speed Visual Content’. Educational Technology
Research 40 (1): 85–95. https://doi.org/10.15077/etr.41093.
Nesbit, John C., and Olusola O. Adesope. 2006. ‘Learning With Concept and
Knowledge Maps: A Meta-Analysis’. Review of Educational Research 76 (3):
413–48. https://doi.org/10.3102/00346543076003413.
Song, Kristine, Amit Chakraborty, Matthew Dawson, Adam Dugan, Brian
Adkins, and Christopher Doty. 2018. ‘Does the Podcast Video Playback
Speed Affect Comprehension for Novel Curriculum Delivery? A Randomized
Trial’. Western Journal of Emergency Medicine 19 (1): 101–5.
https://doi.org/10.5811/westjem.2017.10.36027.
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