Lecture-capture: the early Qatar experience.

Abstract

To the Editor. We read with great interest the article, "Impact of Online Lecture-capture on Student Outcomes in a Therapeutics Course." We commend the authors for exploring this ancillary teaching technology and attempting to assess its impact on student outcomes, including course grades and class attendance. We believe a number of their findings merit comment. While the authors demonstrated that final examination scores were higher in the study group, use of historic controls threatens the validity of this comparison, as confounding factors such as course modifications, differences among student cohorts in scholastic ability, and related factors were not formally considered. We were not surprised to learn that the investigators were unable to identify a relationship between accession volume and final course grades, because access is only 1 variable that will determine academic performance, and both academically strong and weak students would be expected to access lecture-capture materials.