Technologies, modes and pedagogic potential in live versus online lectures

Institutions of higher education worldwide are increasingly making recorded lectures available online to all students. Rationales given for introducing these pedagogic modes includes claims of student demand, economic necessity, and pedagogic advantage. The research base in relation to the latter is especially thin, and the substitution of attendance in person with recorded lectures raises important issues regarding teaching effectiveness and learner experience. In this study we compare segments of pre-recorded voiced PowerPoints with video-recorded live lectures featuring the same lecturer, content and PowerPoint slides. The spoken texts for both versions were transcribed and analyzed and the body language of the lecturer was also tracked in the live lecture. Systemic Functional Linguistic tools are used to analyze how differences in the technologies and modes of communication impact on the construal of interpersonal, ideational and textual meanings. We approach the question from the perspective of context dependency--the potential for lecturer and students to connect in a you-and-me, here-and-now sense--and specifically to the construct of 'presence' (Martin & Matruglio, 2014). Analyses reveal considerable differences between the two lecture types and we propose important implications for the choice and design of pedagogic modes, particularly those of pre-recorded or live lectures.