Death of the uni lecture: Professors say students are ‘voting with their feet’ and abandoning face-to-face learning

The future of face-to-face learning at Australia’s universities is in grave doubt amid a widening generation gap on the value of traditional lectures versus online classes.

Adelaide University students Jade O'Dwyer, Holly Warncken, Phoebe Loudon and Amelia Trengove, all 19, on campus yesterday. Picture: Ben Clark

The future of face-to-face learning at Australia’s universities is in serious doubt as more institutions ditch old-school lectures in favour of full online or hybrid learning models.

While some students and staff are campaigning to save lectures from the chopping block, others in the sector say the train has already left the station and the future of universities is online as students “vote with their feet”.

The face-to-face debate reared its head again recently as Adelaide University students and staff protested what they claimed was a move away from in-person learning at Australia’s newest university – a claim the university continues to deny.

Potential students can now choose from nearly 900 Australian university degrees all delivered online.

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Meanwhile, Open University Australia helps potential students connect with more than 890 online degrees in response to changing student preferences.

University of Southern Queensland (USQ) Associate Professor Alice Brown has researched and written on the challenges and opportunities of online higher education learning, finding the ultimate determiner is the students themselves who routinely “vote with their feet”.

“There is a trend and phenomena of students becoming increasingly discerning about how they want to study and when they want to study,” Professor Brown said.

“If they are not offered an online option, then they will vote with their feet and go to courses that are fully online.”

Hanno De Klerk, a 20-year-old physiotherapy student at Adelaide University, said the current system of prerecorded lectures, live tutorials and hands-on workshops “work for him”.

“I do completely see the use of a prerecorded online lecture because I can pause it whenever I want to, go back, do it again …. and then an hour-long tutorial where you can just ask questions about the lecture,” he said.

USQ Associate Professor Alice Brown has studied the future of higher education.

Student Hanno De Klerk, 20, at Adelaide University. Picture: Ben Clark

Fellow Adelaide University students Jade O’Dwyer, Phoebe Loudon, Amelia Trengove and Holly Warncken – all 19-year-old occupational therapy students – say minimal face-to-face lectures worked for them.

Ms O’Dwyer said they were required to attend workshops in person so the more opportunities to attend lectures online the better.

Ms Warncken said the current mix of online lectures and compulsory practical workshops for their occupational therapy course was ideal.

Professor Brown said after USQ offered more online courses, she noticed a natural attrition of students engaging and attending in-person as they opted for the flexibility of online learning.

She said most teaching and learning at USQ is now online.

“There’s an expectation among some students that they have the right to an on-campus experience,” Professor Brown said.

“But it comes down to critical mass, it comes to a point where the economic rationale for the university to offer face-to-face is no longer financially viable.”

Not everyone supports the move to online learning — Professor Jan Slapeta, Professor of Veterinary and Molecular Parasitology at Sydney University made this post in August, 2022.

Professor Brown said with online learning comes the responsibility to teach it properly.

“The facilitation of online learning comes with the expectation to make it as good or even better than the face-to-face delivery,” she said.

“I have written a guide on different types of engagement and how to facilitate socialising and collaborating online. For example, we do an online O-Week to break down the barriers of distance and facilitate social engagement.”

Professor Brown’s student cohort is quite different to city centre tertiary institutions like Adelaide University – USQ serves many rural and regional students.

Nevertheless, Professor Brown said she believes the future is online for all universities.

“Those universities wanting to promote an on-campus experience will need to convince students the value of that in-person experience outweighs the flexibility of online learning,” she said.

“For those who choose to promote their university as primarily face-to-face – the promotion of what that looks like and sounds like needs to be very clear and convincing because of the alternative online is offering us now.”

The debate comes as a number of Victorian universities are now offering digital-only lectures, with most choosing not to reintroduce in-person models post-Covid.

RMIT environmental engineering student Ted Oldis, 24, said attending his university in-person was a toss-up decision he makes daily.

Mr Oldis described the university stories of his parents’ generation as a bygone era.

“If you’re trying to juggle work, friends and study you have to balance the convenience of the online lectures with attending in-person,” he said.

“If you don’t need the social aspect and you think the learning is the same, it honestly comes down to convenience, and more often than not it’s easier to do the online learning.”

Mr Oldis said he had toyed with attending as many lectures and tutorials as possible in-person this semester.

“This semester I made a conscious decision to attend every class and lecture I can in-person,” he said.

“I wanted to try to engage more and meet new people. But to be honest, I don’t feel it’s been worth it compared to doing the same stuff online.”

Mr Oldis said the stories he heard from his mother and her friends about university life seem to be from a bygone era in the digital age.

“There’s supposedly an ethereal quality about universities,” he said.

“Our parents speak about it, but I think that is in the past now, which is sad. It’d be great if everyone committed fully to attending university every day in person, but in reality we’re all juggling a lot of things and now the option is there to step back and do the work online, most people are taking it.”

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Originally published as Death of the uni lecture: Professors say students are ‘voting with their feet’ and abandoning face-to-face learning