Should we still lecture or just post examination questions on the web? The nature of the shift towards pragmatism in undergraduate lecture attendance

An empirical study was conducted to gain understanding about the motivations of undergraduate students in attending lectures. Students were highly heterogeneous regarding their reported lecture attendance motivations, with two segments representing prototypical extremes. The student group labelled ‘idealists’ in this study reported genuinely enjoying lectures, were mature-aged students with working experience and more frequent in the arts subjects surveyed. Students labelled ‘pragmatics’ in this study were most highly represented in the commerce subjects surveyed, were among the younger students, reported attending lectures to get the information they need to succeed in the subject and reported the lowest lecture attendance while achieving the highest grade-point average of the students in the study. Generally, as opposed to the findings of previous studies into reasons for lecture attendance in the 1970s, a shift towards pragmatism among students seems to have occurred and now defines the reality of the tertiary education environment. Disciplines Business | Social and Behavioral Sciences Publication Details This is an electronic version of an article originally published as: Dolnicar, S. (2005). Should we still lecture or just post examination questions on the web? The nature of the shift towards pragmatism in undergraduate lecture attendance. Quality in Higher Education, 11(2), 103-115. This journal article is available at Research Online: http://ro.uow.edu.au/commpapers/299 1 Should we still lecture or just post examination questions on the web? The nature of the shift towards pragmatism in undergraduate lecture attendance Sara Dolnicar School of Marketing & Management, University of Wollongong Northfields Ave, 2522 Wollongong, NSW Australia Phone: +61 2 4221 3862, Fax: +61 2 4221 4154, [email protected] Abstract An empirical study was conducted to gain understanding about the motivations of undergraduate students in attending lectures. Students were highly heterogeneous regarding their reported lecture attendance motivations, with two segments representing prototypical extremes. The student group labelled ‘idealists’ in this study reported genuinely enjoying lectures, were mature-aged students with working experience and more frequent in the arts subjects surveyed. Students labelled ‘pragmatics’ in this study were most highly represented in the commerce subjects surveyed, were among the younger students, reported attending lectures to get the information they need to succeed in the subject and reported the lowest lecture attendance while achieving the highest grade-point average of the students in the study. Generally, as opposed to the findings of previous studies into reasons for lecture attendance in the 1970s, a shift towards pragmatism among students seems to have occurred and now defines the reality of the tertiary education environment.An empirical study was conducted to gain understanding about the motivations of undergraduate students in attending lectures. Students were highly heterogeneous regarding their reported lecture attendance motivations, with two segments representing prototypical extremes. The student group labelled ‘idealists’ in this study reported genuinely enjoying lectures, were mature-aged students with working experience and more frequent in the arts subjects surveyed. Students labelled ‘pragmatics’ in this study were most highly represented in the commerce subjects surveyed, were among the younger students, reported attending lectures to get the information they need to succeed in the subject and reported the lowest lecture attendance while achieving the highest grade-point average of the students in the study. Generally, as opposed to the findings of previous studies into reasons for lecture attendance in the 1970s, a shift towards pragmatism among students seems to have occurred and now defines the reality of the tertiary education environment. Gaps of knowledge The motivation for this study was to understand the reasons for, and patterns of, lecture attendance by students. An empirical study was conducted to gain more insight into what moves undergraduate students to attend lectures, to determine whether there are systematic differences between groups of students, and if so, what the nature of these differences might be. The research questions guiding the study included the following. 1. What motivates students to attend lectures? 2. Are there differences in lecture attendance across faculties?