Should live sessions be recorded for students when teaching a math course online? I am a course instructor. In my courses, which are now online due to the pandemic, I have optional live sessions. In those live sessions, I give examples of how to solve problems (it's a math-based course), and answer student questions in a group setting.
This design comes as close as possible to pre-pandemic settings: students were never required to attend my lectures, but were always encouraged to do so.
Lectures have never been recorded.
I think that if I were to provide recordings of these live sessions, more students would not bother to attend. I strongly believe that attendance at these sessions is pivotal for understanding, and that watching posted videos of these sessions will not have the same effect. However, some students have indicated that they strongly prefer recorded videos, so that they can watch them in their own time. I specifically do not want to allow this, as I think it discourages proper time management and may lead to problems down the road.
There are already additional posted videos to help students who may be struggling with the content.
Other instructors: do you record your live sessions? If so, why, and if not, why not? Do you agree or disagree with my thoughts, and why?
EDIT (clarification as asked for in a comment):
The institution I teach for has emphasized the importance of teaching time management skills to first year students. These are first year courses, and so I am expected to teach time management in addition to math.
Additional notes of clarification requested in other comments:
All of the content I discuss in the live sessions has also been provided in multiple other formats: text, linked videos, etc. I think the value of the live session is the fact that it is live. When I was in undergrad, if I didn't attend a lecture, I didn't understand the content. Some lectures were recorded, but since I couldn't ask questions in real time, I couldn't benefit in the same way. There are already videos of this content - why would recording my live sessions add value if this is the case?
Adding another point to the discussion
Does anyone have any concerns regarding intellectual property? At my institution, all course materials created (including any assessments, posted lecture notes, lecture videos, etc.) are the property of the institution as far as I know. How should intellectual property rights factor into this discussion, if at all?
And another point
My understanding of the goal of putting instructional materials online was to preserve the &quot;in person&quot; experience as much as possible during the pandemic. If there is no live component that is unrecorded, that doesn't hold true to the pre-pandemic experience.
I do provide recordings. At my former university it was a policy to do that, but I had started it already before when I didn't have to. Where I am now I can decide whether I want to do it, and I do.
A major reason why I'm doing it is because students love it - at both universities, as long as it wasn't obligatory, students in the feedback always asked for recordings where they were not provided, and seemed always to be happy when they were provided, and I mean fairly big numbers of students and a striking majority of those who wrote anything about it (I think I have only ever seen a single student writing anything critical about it, and I have seen lots of student feedback).
Now I accept that we shouldn't do things just to make the students happy, but on the other hand I think it is somewhat partronising to not do something they ask for that I could easily do and wouldn't affect my overall didactical concept much.  I have the attitude to give the students responsibility for their own learning (I do tell them what I think is reasonable but if they want to do things in a different way it's up to them), and I want them to show up in my class not because they have to (due to withholding of resources that I could easily give) but because they decide to do so and they want to be there. My experience  is that providing recordings makes students' presence go down a little bit, but really not a lot (let's say 90% attendance with recordings relative to without, but I haven't systematically counted so this is a guess), and I am under no illusion about whether students who'd be there otherwise would properly concentrate on the lecture all the time - in fact in the old pre-Covid days there were student groups that annoyed me quite a bit by obvious lack of concentration and listening in presence. My impression is that the handful of students who don't come because there is a recording largely belong to the bunch that didn't get much out of being there either.
I have occasionally revisited recordings of presentations I attended, so I see where the benefit is. As others have already written in the comments, a student can go through an argument slower and more than once, or may remind themselves of something they missed in real time (we should not think that students listen all the time during live sessions - I once learnt that it is extremely hard if not impossible to keep attention up for more than 15-20 minutes). There is definitely some use in having recordings, so not only do I listen to what the students want, I also see a good reason why they want it.
A potential disadvantage is that some students may not ask questions or contribute to the class if they know there are recordings out of fear to come over as stupid. I never heard any student admitting to this for themselves, but I have heard and can imagine that this is an issue for some. My impression is that student participation hasn't gone down significantly because of recordings, but these &quot;data&quot; are very noisy and I'm actually not totally sure.