Lecture Recording System in Anatomy: Possible Benefit to Auditory Learners

The literature reports that using Learning Recording Systems (LRS) is usually well received by students but that the pedagogical value of LRS in academic settings remains somewhat unclear. The primary aim of the current study is to document students' perceptions, actual pattern of usage, and impact of use of LRS on students' grade in a dental gross and neuroanatomy course. Other aims are to determine if students' learning preference correlated with final grades and to see if other factors like gender, age, overall academic score on the Dental Aptitude Test (DAT), lecture levels of difficulty, type of lecture, category of lecture, or teaching faculty could explain the impact, if any, of the use of LRS on the course final grade. No significant correlation was detected between the final grades and the variables studied except for a significant but modest correlation between final grades and the number of times the students accessed the lecture recordings (r=0.33 with P=0.01). Also, after adjusting for gender, age, learning style, and academic DAT, a significant interaction between auditory and average usage time was found for final grade (P=0.03). Students who classified themselves as auditory and who used the LRS on average for fewer than 10 minutes per access, scored an average final grade of 16.43 % higher than the nonauditory students using the LRS for the same amount of time per access. Based on these findings, implications for teaching are discussed and recommendations for use of LRS are proposed. Anat Sci Educ 6: 376-384. (c) 2013 American Association of Anatomists.