Exploring the Elements that Support Student Motivation to View Pre-Recorded Lecture Content in Physiology and Related Health Sciences
Authors: Appel Joanna , LaFleche Kevin 
Published: May 2024

Within higher education, course content has traditionally been delivered via didactic lectures. In line with evolving pedagogical theory & approaches, there has been a shift towards incorporating more active learning elements & evidence-based teaching methods into the curriculum, including offering more flipped learning opportunities. In a flipped learning environment, students are provided material to review and study before attending an in-person scheduled class session (pre-work). In class, the instructor facilitates active learning opportunities to promote learning & application at higher levels of Bloom’s taxonomy of learning. Studies show that students who complete assigned pre-work before an in-person learning session perform better in a course than those who do not, yet motivating students to complete assigned pre-work in advance has been identified as a significant challenge in the flipped classroom. One primary mode of delivery for pre-work in the flipped classroom is via pre-recorded lecture content. The format, duration, and design of pre-recorded lectures varies widely across disciplines, depending almost entirely upon the determination of the instructor. While effective design methods for creating and delivering pre-recorded lectures are well-established, identifying factors which either motivate or deter students from viewing pre-recorded lectures in advance remains a challenge. To explore factors which motivate students to view pre-recorded lectures, we examined the experiences of students at the University of South Carolina School of Medicine Columbia following their encounters & usage of pre-recorded lecture content during the Physiology block of the first-year curriculum. Preclerkship medical students who had been assigned a series of pre-recorded lecture content as a component of the curriculum were invited to participate in semi-structured focus group interviews to discuss their experiences with pre-recorded lecture videos and the subsequent in-person learning sessions. Ten students out of a class of 97 volunteered to participate and interview transcripts were qualitatively analyzed to identify factors that motivated students to view pre-recorded lecture content in advance as well as factors that impeded their ability to do so. Factors which students identified as motivators for viewing lecture recordings in advance fell into two general categories: (1) those which served as intrinsic motivators (self-determination theory) and (2) those which reduced cognitive load (cognitive load theory). In line with self-determination theory, instructor attempts to enforce extrinsic motivators were not identified by students as supporting their attempts to view lectures in advance, instead being reported to have hindered their ability to effectively study the material. Overall, we identified the in-class learning environment to have had the greatest impact on students’ decision to view pre-recorded lectures in advance. Ongoing steps of this study include delivery and analysis of a Likert-style survey to all students who have been assigned a series of pre-recorded lecture content as a component of the curriculum to further explore the themes identified in our qualitative discovery. We hope that other educators may use these findings to optimize the design and delivery of flipped and active learning environments.

This project was internally funded by the University of South Carolina's Student Opportunities for Academic Achievement Through Research Program and a Center for Teaching Excellence Innovative Pedagogy Grant.

This is the full abstract presented at the American Physiology Summit 2024 meeting and is only available in HTML format. There are no additional versions or additional content available for this abstract. Physiology was not involved in the peer review process.