Effect of Live Attendance and Video Capture Viewing on Student Examination Performance

Objective. To compare pharmacy students' performance in a therapeutics course after attending live lectures and/or viewing video-recorded lectures. Methods. Attendance was taken during seven lectures spaced equally throughout the therapeutics course. Data on students' viewing of the video-recorded lectures was extracted. Students were grouped based on class attendance and video-viewing behavior; these data were correlated to student performance on examination lecture specific material. The data were also evaluated based on students' final course grade. Results. From each lecture for which data were collected, between 346 and 349 students were included in the analysis, resulting in 2,430 data points. Students who were attended lecture and did not access the video-recorded lecture were associated with better performance on the respective examination than students who were absent and accessed the video-recorded lecture only once (grade=71.0 vs 62.3). Students who attended lecture, regardless of whether they subsequently viewed the video online, were associated with better performance on the examination than students who were absent (70.4 vs 64.0). Among all students who attended lecture, those that also used the video-recorded lecture were associated with similar performance on the examination as those who did not access the video (grade=69.1 vs 71.0). Conclusion. Results from this pilot study demonstrated that live class attendance was associated with higher examination performance than viewing recorded lectures for a therapeutics class. The results of this pilot study can be used to guide future research in understanding how teaching methods affect student performance.