Controversy is raging over the pros, cons, ethics, impact on the student experience, of recording elluminate tutorials.
By coincidence, in my day job, my attention has just been drawn to a paper on the value of students watching recordings of tutorials.
It's a limited study of physics, in a non-OU context, so needs further research. But, if it proved to be applicable it would imply that:
1). Students gain little simply from viewing recordings of elluminate tutorials
2). Students who do not wish to be recorded and hence are debarred from asking questions and participating actively in elluminate tutorials gain little from the tutorial
3). A more effective use of elluminate would be to use it to enable two students collaboratively and actively to watch a video of a good f2f tutorial undertaken with consenting students. To be effective this would, I think, have to be built into the tuition model at course production stage.
Be interesting to see whether this gets picked up and followed up by the OU.