Undergraduate students’ experiences with recorded lectures: towards a theory of acculturation

The use of recorded lectures—an instructional format that involves recording live lectures and disseminating these recordings to students by means of various technologies—as substitutes for classroom instruction is a growing phenomenon in higher education. Sustained use of recorded lectures has the potential to significantly alter students’ college experience, however research on students’ experiences with recorded lectures is scarce. This article reports a qualitative study of undergraduate students’ experiences with sustained participation in recorded lectures as a required part of their curriculum, thereby addressing calls for research on the impact of technology on students’ college experience. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews with 14 students enrolled in a campus-based undergraduate degree program in business at a flagship public university in the US, and were consequently analyzed using grounded theory. The findings suggest that students’ experiences constitute a process of acculturation into the institutional context of recorded lecture courses through four stages, which are respectively labeled ignorance, disillusionment, crisis, and coping. The study’s findings have implications for future research and practice in student development and instructional technology.