Online Classes without Video Lectures

I am taking an online class with Penn State and am surprised by the lack of a lecture. I have a formal brick and mortar bachelor's and have been under the impression lecturing was very important. Maybe it's not the case and this is common?

We have readings and assignments each week. Reading are from both the book and developed by the school. This is a statistics course.

What are your thoughts on the importance of a lecture?

 

Between my kids and my husband and myself, we've taken distance learning courses at 11 colleges, and so far, only 1 of the colleges has had weekly lectures (all of mine at Harvard Extension). The other 10 have relied on linked video clips from OTHER instructors - youtube, powerpoint, and reading.

 

I have yet to take an in-person class where the "sage on the stage" has contributed anything that I couldn't have gleaned from reading the textbook. In fact, I had one professor who talked about just about everything BUT the course material (local politics, national politics, the weather, etc.).

 

My butt-in-seat classes have mostly (with a couple of duds) had excellent professors whose lectures expanded on and clarified material in the textbooks. The interaction and class activities was an important part of the learning process. This could pretty easily be replicated in an online setting, but requires real work on the part of the professor, and most aren't willing to do it. My online/correspondence classes generally had less interaction (my correspondence, none at all, unless I emailed the prof for info), but the texts, worksheet assignments, and such were excellent.

I only had one online class (which I dropped) that had weekly video lectures. I ended up taking the same class via correspondence and the book and assignments did a great job (arguably better than the video lectures would have been) of covering the material fully.

I think if you have an amazing prof, lectures are useful and valuable. But I suspect that the profs who genuinely prepare for, and care about, the lectures they present aren't that common in most online environments.