There will be no live, in-person lectures at 17 Australian and New Zealand universities first semester, compared to 14 which will host them. And 13 universities are either not considering live lectures in the longer term, or are yet to decide.

The findings are from a survey of 43 ANZ universities by the Australasian Council on Open, Distance and e-Learning, which found while COVID-19 restrictions are the main reason, the pandemic “has only accelerated a general shift away from face-to-face lectures.

“It is clear that there is a definite swing away from offering as many lectures as has been the case in the past, with institutions indicating, in their qualitative responses, that their preferences are moving towards more blended models of delivery, to provide more flexibility for students,” ACODE president Michael Sankey (Griffith U) states in a survey report, released yesterday.

Alternatives to in-person lectures being/to be used include,

* video/podcast content followed by F2F or on-line classes

* interactive classes (as distinct from presentations)

* recorded/live-streamed sessions running at a scheduled time

However the “in the room where it happens” lecture still has supporters. Professor Sankey reports, “five institutions nominated that lectures would be maintained for the foreseeable future in most cases. Reasons for this included, ‘the lecture is so cheap’, ‘many of our academics are very old fashioned’, ‘size of the cohorts,’ ‘the physical environment of the lecture theatre engages students’.”