After the events of the past few years, universities have continued to appreciate the concept of hybrid and most lectures are still accommodating remote participation. However, while the situation has improved from the early 2020, both students and lecturers are still facing numerous technology related issues, common complaints being the quality of audio, video and a general lack of understanding of the technology. In our research, we are examining these issues and identifying solutions in order to make recommendations to educational institutions on how to ensure that the quality of technology does not come in the way of students' learning performance.
Since the beginning of 2020, education systems faced a challenging situation on how to conduct
lectures during the Covid-19 lockdowns. Due to the urgent situation, schools and universities
quickly implemented diferent remote lecture models. Overtime better practices, choices of
technology and guidelines were developed in order to better meet the needs of the students and
teachers alike. Despite the pandemic easing up recently, most universities are still embracing
the option for hybrid learning. While the implementations for remote lectures have improved,
there is still work to be done for ensuring that that the technology does not hinder the learning
experience[
The purpose of our research is to identify the issues relating to the technology used in remote
lectures and find solutions for improving the students’ performance in these remote lecture
settings. In this paper we aim at a better understanding on what issues students are facing
regarding the quality of the technology such as audio and video quality and how it can afect
students’ performance. We conducted six semi-structured interviews with university students
regarding their experiences with remote lectures, issues they have had in the past relating to
the lecture technology and their views of the efects of quality of the technology. Based on
these findings, we can make suggestions to universities on how to ensure that the quality of
the technology does not interfere with learning performance and also use this data for future
research.
1.1. Related Work
There has been prior work related to how certain aspects of audio quality can have an efect on
learning performance. A study by Marey et al. [
For this research, we conducted a qualitative interview study to establish a baseline for future investigations. We employed two selection criteria for interviewees: 1) current enrollment in higher education and 2) recent participation in remote lectures. The first criterion ensured that responses could be meaningfully compared, focusing on students in higher education. The second criterion aimed to capture current remote lecture experiences, acknowledging that early 2020 experiences might not reflect the current remote lecture environment.
We interviewed six university students about their experiences with remote lectures, using a
convenience sampling approach. Their profiles are detailed in Table 1. Interviews followed a
semi-structured format, with uniform questions and limited interviewer comments, aligning
with Kallio (2016) [
The interviews comprised three question sets: 1) questions on the interviewee’s major, year,
role in the university, and technology proficiency; 2) questions about remote lecture experiences;
and 3) questions regarding technology quality and its impact on learning performance. The first
set established baseline information and identified potential correlations with later responses
[
Nine key findings emerged from the early phase of data analysis which we considered to have significance. The findings are presented in the Table 2. The third column signifies the percentage of the interviewees who agree with the finding reported in the second column.
From these nine findings, three were most significant; All interviewees agree that low quality of audio can decrease performance of the students. One interviewee (ID6) claimed: “I think the audio part is the most important.” They also all agree that it is important to educate lecturers on the use of technology and increase their awareness of the quality of audio/video and the its impact on the learning experience. In regards to the video quality, only one interviewee (ID6) had the sentiment that lower quality video feed can negatively afect the learning performance. Other interviewee (ID4) emphasizing the importance over audio over video: “I think that video camera is not that important, it can be low quality, but audio flow should be really good because mic can eat up some sounds and then it can be really unclear what have been told.”
The purpose of this research is to gain an understanding what issues students are facing regarding remote lecture technology and their thoughts on how quality of this technology can afect performance. Based on the preliminary findings from the interviews, we have gained some indications that the level of quality can correlate with learning performance. In order to ensure a successful learning experience, there is a certain level of quality that must be met, otherwise it can afect student’s performance in the lecture. However increasing the quality past this level can have diminishing returns. Audio quality was deemed more important than video quality as many students do not necessarily follow the lecture visually at all. All interviewees describing experiencing issues regarding audio and mentioned the importance of educating the lecturers on lecture technology.
In this paper, we found out what kind of issues students are still facing relating to the remote lecture technology and how they perceive the quality of the technology and its efects on learning performance. There is a certain level of quality that must be met in order to have an undisturbed learning experience but also that increasing the quality past that level can have diminishing returns. There should be more standardized equipment provided to the lecturer’s and more education on practices relating to technology used in remote lectures.
We are continuing our research regarding the subject and we are conducting a survey study based on the data from this study. With this, we can have a better understanding on how certain aspects of quality can afect performance.