Moments that Matter: Understanding the Student Lifecycle
Two students sit in the same first lecture of term. One has come straight from a part-time shift and is grateful the recording will still be there to watch back that evening. The other has chosen this university specifically for its small-group teaching, and would rather lose the recording altogether than lose an hour of contact time. Neither of them is wrong.
Jisc’s 2024/25 Digital Experience Insights research captures that tension precisely: 72% of students say their teaching is delivered mainly on campus, while 48% say they’d prefer a blended or fully online approach. Flexibility matters enormously to some students. For others, reduced contact time feels like something has been taken away, not added.
But it goes beyond mere preference. Different people learn best in very different ways: some can listen, absorb, comprehend and respond; others need to learn by doing, and lecture capture is important for this as it allows students to replay elements to grasp the concepts.
So it’s not about simply deciding if and how much teaching should move online, because it is not just about preference, it is about supporting students to learn in a way that works best for them.
The two students in that lecture theatre have different needs, and a digital strategy built for only one of them will fail the other.
So the answer isn’t about choosing a side. It’s building a common digital foundation solid enough to make both experiences better at once. A recorded lecture doesn’t have to replace the discussion in the room – it can be what a student returns to when a concept hasn’t landed the first time. Shared digital tools can let group work carry on after the seminar has ended, rather than being confined to the hour it happened in. Captions and transcripts, added once, quietly make every lecture more accessible to more people. Handled this way, neither student has to lose something for the other to gain it.
The risk for a CIO is that flexibility, left unchecked, turns into sprawl – a different tool for every department, inconsistent practice from one course to the next, and a landscape that becomes almost impossible to support well. The job isn’t to offer unlimited choice. It’s to build enough consistency underneath that academics still have room to teach differently and students still have room to learn differently, without the whole thing pulling apart at the seams. That only really works when technology decisions are made alongside academic staff, not handed to them afterwards – because the value shows up in how someone teaches, not in the platform itself.
Jisc’s research suggests most universities have already made real progress here, with 84% of students rating their digital learning experience positively – and with initiatives such as captions for disabled or foreign students, hearing loops and other disability support now commonplace, it is easy to see why. The harder work now isn’t proving that investment happened. It’s making sure a lecture theatre full of students with very different reasons for being there can all feel, individually, that the way they learn has been thought about.
Pre Sales Architect
Kevin Mortimer is a Solution Architect with 25 years in technical leadership roles across varied cyber and infrastructure domains. Evangelising technology is a passion especially around sustainability outcomes and community engagement. Kevin is an avid volunteer focussing on supporting young people including; Cub leader, Chair of School Governors and a youth rugby coach.
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