One of the most vivid memories of my study-abroad experience in
New Zealand was the first week when my friends and I were shopping
to furnish our rented house.
We were looking for some kind of megastore but instead found
Warehouse, which is as close as it gets. Having come fresh from Los
Angeles, I immediately became aware of Warehouse’s abundant
limitations.
In New Zealand, if I wanted a motion-activated talking lawn
gnome, a bathtub full of ball bearings, and a 100-pound bag of
unmixed cement, I would have to go to three different stores
““ an imposition that initially struck me as it would strike
any American: tragic and unfair.
I would later realize that the level of convenience we have come
to demand in the United States is nothing short of absurd. And it
seems with UCLA’s BruinCast ““ taped lectures posted
online ““ that the demand for fast-and-easy has finally come
knocking on the classroom door.
BruinCast is not without its advantages. This pilot program
involving four classes was launched last quarter, and an in-class
poll of the students revealed that 38.2 percent found webcasts
“very helpful” compared to a combined 2.1 percent who
claimed that it “strongly detracted” or “slightly
detracted” from their learning experience.
In addition, when asked whether they would retain the BruinCast
program, an overwhelming 72.4 percent of students said they
would.
It is notable that the in-class poll only had a 56 percent
response rate out of 768 students, and therefore does not represent
those who decided to reap the absentee benefits of the program they
were supposed to be evaluating that day.
Professor John Zaller taught Political Science 141B, one of the
four classes in the pilot program last quarter, and though he
reported that his class attendance settled at 55 percent (compared
to a normal 85 percent), there was no noticeable difference in
final grades.
Despite this, he has his doubts about the process, on both sides
of the classroom. “I don’t like it,” he said.
“It goes against my sense of tradition, my feeling of what
college should be.”
But Zaller added that he has no rational basis for his
opposition, and “if students wanted me to use it, I
would.”
The statistics in the student poll and the attendance lull
aren’t surprising. Of course students like BruinCast; the
scholastically inclined get to review the professor’s lecture
for information they missed, and the lazy get to foster their
laziness by not going to class at all.
But the positives and negatives of this particular program are
not as pertinent to the debate as are the larger issues of
BruinCast in the lens of scholastics as a whole.
Whether broadcasted lectures would help or hinder students is
secondary to the question of whether that level of safety-net
convenience is needed.
One person who is concerned about the bigger picture is
economics Professor Lee Ohanian who, in a recent Los Angeles Times
interview, said that “too much technology really leads to a
passive learning environment.” Ohanian’s line of
reasoning reflects the wise notion that just because a thing is
possible, it doesn’t make it necessary.
I am certain that BruinCast helps some of the students in the
test courses, but the rest of us don’t have it (nor did the
UCLA students who came before us), and we all get by. It could
benefit student learning, but so would a service that offers
extensive notes for every lecture and discussion at UCLA.
Some professors do post their lecture notes online, and others,
like immunology and microbiology Professor Robert Goldberg, request
that their lectures be recorded and posted online. But these are
personal decisions for the professor to make, and they
shouldn’t be a schoolwide program. The mere fact that a taped
lecture is useful does not make it a good idea.
BruinCast, beyond all its pro/con theory debate, is
fundamentally unnecessary. It is a level of convenience that we
simply do not need.
Going to class is one of the main pillars of being a student,
and it is dangerous to train ourselves to see our physical presence
in class as a superfluous annoyance.
Looking back on my time in New Zealand, it is easy to see my
reaction to its commercial limitations as foolish cultural bigotry.
But at the time, shopping to furnish my house seemed almost more
trouble than it was worth.
Living in Los Angeles, we can’t help but feel entitled to
convenience. There is nothing to be done about a drive-thru United
States, but we can stop it from permeating the classroom doors of
our academic institutions.
If you want this compressed into a 10-second sound bite,
e-mail O’Bryan at jobryan@media.ucla.edu. Send general
comments to viewpoint@media.ucla.edu.