How does choosing to attend lectures online or in person affect grades?
Choosing to watch lecture recordings instead of attending in person has almost no impact on students' final exam grades, provided they stick to a consistent study routine.
Source
Attending lectures in person, hybrid or online-how do students choose, and what about the outcome?
What they did
Researchers analyzed the learning behaviors of university students by distributing 43,979 survey forms to students enrolled in various classes at a large technical university during the Spring 2022 exam period. They gathered 17,641 surveys across 381 courses to analyze how different lecture attendance styles (in-person, live online, or recorded) related to final grades and student motivations. Of these responses, 13,585 were completely filled out with answers to all questions and linked directly to final administrative course grades.
What they found
The researchers discovered that the way students chose to watch or attend lectures had virtually no direct influence on their final exam grades, except for students who lacked a consistent strategy. Students who split their time evenly between on-site and online attendance scored slightly worse, whereas those who chose to watch recorded videos for more than half of their classes were highly satisfied, with 70.8% recommending this approach to others. However, in interactive courses that used in-class response systems, struggling students who attended live sessions in person scored moderately higher than those who only watched recorded lectures.
The limits
What it doesn't show
Because students were allowed to select their own attendance methods rather than being randomly assigned, the study cannot establish a direct causal link between attendance choices and exam scores. Additionally, because the data comes from a single highly competitive technical university with a unique system where exams occur weeks or months after courses end, these trends might not apply to other university settings or humanities courses. The research also cannot measure the long-term impacts of online learning on soft skills, group socialization, and overall campus culture, which are not captured by exam grades.
Key terms
- Self-determination theory
- A psychological framework suggesting that people are highly motivated to learn and grow when their basic needs for autonomy, competence, and social connection are met.
- Interactive engagement
- An active learning instructional method that encourages students to participate directly in classes through discussions, problem-solving, or voting devices.
- Selection bias
- A distortion in research analysis that happens when the participants who choose to join a study are not representative of the broader population being evaluated.
- Hidden curriculum
- The unwritten, informal lessons and academic values that students absorb implicitly through the university culture rather than the formal syllabus.
- Binge-watching
- The learning behavior where a student views multiple lecture recordings back-to-back in a very brief period rather than spacing them out.
Flashcards
Want these cards to stick?
Save the deck to NoteFren and study it with spaced repetition.
Quiz yourself
What was the overall relationship between lecture attendance modes and final exam grades in this study?
Common questions
Did students who skipped lectures entirely fail their exams?
No, surprisingly, students who reported never attending live lectures or watching the recordings had an average exam grade that was almost identical to the overall average of all students in the study.
Why did so many students prefer recorded lectures over in-person attendance?
Students mainly chose recorded lectures because they were more time-efficient, allowed them to avoid long commutes, eliminated schedule conflicts from double-booked classes, and let them control the playback speed.
Did playing lecture videos at a faster speed harm student learning?
No, students who watched recordings at a faster pace actually earned slightly higher average grades, with some noting that the faster speed helped keep their minds from drifting.
Is there any situation where attending live lectures actually improved grades?
Yes, in classes that used interactive response tools like clickers, lower-performing students who attended live sessions scored moderately higher than those who only watched recordings.
More on Blended learning