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Lectures are a commonly used teaching method in higher education, but there is significant debate about the relative merits of different classroom practices. Various classroom observation tools have been developed to try to give insight into these practices, beyond the simple dichotomy of “traditional lecturing versus active learning”. Here we review of a selection of classroom observation protocols from an ethological perspective, and describe how this informed the development of a new protocol, FILL+. We demonstrate that FILL+ can be applied reliably by undergraduate students after minimal training. We analysed a sample of 208 lecture recordings from Mathematics, Physics, and Veterinary Medicine and found a wide variety of classroom practices, e.g. on average lecturers spent 2.1% (±2.6%) of the time asking questions, and 79.3% (±19%) of the lecture talking, but individuals varied considerably. The FILL+ protocol has the potential to be widely used, both in research on effective teaching practices, and in informing discussion of pedagogical approaches within institutions and disciplines.

While it is increasingly common for live lectures to be recorded and made available online, there has been little exploration of how lecture capture usage fits within the wider context of digital resources available to students. Here we report on in-depth semi-structured interviews with first year students taking both flipped and non-flipped classes in mathematics and physics at the University of Edinburgh. Thematic analysis was used to understand students’ experiences of lecture capture and other digital resources such as lecture slides and lecture notes and how these were used during their studies. Two conceptual themes emerged: a) Supporting learning in live lectures and b) Personalisation of learning. Results show that students saw lecture capture as just one of a number of digital resources available to them, and that their choice of resource depended on the affordances of the resource, the way in which information was presented in lectures and their beliefs about learning. The availability of digital resources seemed to support learning in live lectures by reducing the multi-tasking involved in note-taking and by providing a safety net for missed notes and for the occasional missed lecture. Implications for teaching practice are discussed.

Transitions as a concept is gaining increasing traction in both academic development and student experience enhancement, but little has been written about how it can be used to design research studies into learning and teaching. This paper demonstrates how a transitional perspective has been used to inform an exploratory study of the move from second to third year in an undergraduate maths degree at a large Scottish university. This perspective takes the staff and student experience into account and looks at third year not in isolation, but as part of an entire programme. In doing so, this study is able to offer a deeper understanding of this transition in mathematics which generates questions about the nature of the undergraduate learning and teaching environment for practitioners both within and beyond the discipline.