Poster Presentation ESA-SRB-ANZOS 2025 in conjunction with ENSA

Assessment re-design to encourage timely viewing of lecture content: Lessons from a 3rd-year endocrinology course to keep students ‘on track’ (127480)

Lisa Akison 1 , Amy Chan 1 , Melissa Mitchell 1 , Walter Thomas 1
  1. School of Biomedical Sciences, University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD, Australia

Recording face-to-face lectures has become standard practice in Australian higher education, enabling flexible, asynchronous access to course content. This approach accommodates large student populations, provides learning flexibility and independent revision of material. While recent studies demonstrate a strong student preference for recorded lectures (1), there are also negative impacts on student engagement and performance (2).

We recently reported on student lecture recording viewing behaviours in a 3rd-year endocrinology course at the University of Queensland in Sem1-2023 (3). This study showed that <10% of the student cohort attended lectures in person; 16% watched <1/3 of lecture recordings; 26% binge-watched recordings in the final weeks of semester; and only 25% consistently watched all recordings throughout the semester. These behaviours affected how students performed in the end-of-semester exam.

In response to these viewing behaviours, we re-designed the assessments in Sem1-2025 to encourage consistent engagement with the content. A mid-semester exam was introduced, as well as a series of five low-stakes (5% each) assessments throughout the semester which drew heavily from lectures and practical content. At the start of semester, students were also informed of our previous findings linking viewing behaviour and academic outcomes.

This study will report on lecture viewing data collected from Echo360 analytics throughout Sem1-2025. We compared the proportion of students engaging in each viewing behaviour category pre- and post-assessment re-design, as well as overall performance in the exams. Our preliminary analysis suggests that the new assessment design improved student exam performance. Additionally, 89% of students confirmed in open-ended responses to a meta-learning task that this revised strategy was successful/partly successful in keeping them ‘on track’.

This case study demonstrates how learning analytics and student-centred design can inform curriculum and assessment strategies that enhance student outcomes.

  1. Vlachopoulos P and Jan S (2020) Exploring modes of lecturing as a teaching method in higher education: Student attendance, preference and motivation. Journal of University Teaching & Learning Practice, 17(5).
  2. O’Callaghan FV, Neumann DL, Jones L and Creed PA (2017) The use of lecture recordings in higher education: A review of institutional, student, and lecturer issues. Education and Information Technologies 22:399–415.
  3. Akison L, Dissanayake N, Thomas W, and Colthorpe K (2024) Are they watching? Characterising lecture viewing behaviours by 3rd-year students in an endocrinology course using Echo360 analytics. Society for Reproductive Biology, November, Adelaide