podcasting
Dec. 19th, 2009 12:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lobelia321Does anyone of you use podcasting in teaching?
For my own reference: Notes from G. Salmon and P. Edirisingha, eds, Podcasting for Learning in Universities, 2008:
- podcasts work best when 3-5 mins long (length of a typical song); max. length 10 mins
- students prefer to listen to podcasts streaming or downloaded on laptops; they don't tend to download them onto their ipods (this may be because they reserve their ipods for music and don't wish for the university to 'intrude' in their private sphere)
- podcasts only work when they are integrated into an overall teaching strategy; if they are perceived as fancy tech add-ons, students will not use them; you need a pedagogical rationale
- podcasts work well if uploaded regularly, like a broadcast, e.g. one professor of engineering at the Uni of Leicester posted a new podcast to his 50 undergrads every Sunday evening during the semester, providing feedback + feedforward + a final joke (these proved motivational); another one at fortnightly intervals
- the introduction of podcasts, for a first-time podcaster, is time-consuming
- if wanting to make radio-type podcasts with interviews and different voices, incl. current and 3rd-year students, then it is important to create a big bank of material in advance; much editing is required
- why students did not listen? lack of time was the main reason; other reasons: not aware of them; technical issues; didn't see relevance
- at the Royal Veterinary College, students captured pod- and videocasts off their own bat; they recorded, edited + published all the lectures (lecturers wore an Olympus digital dictaphone)
- podcasts useful to prepare for sessions, revise afterwards, catch up if they had to miss a session
- students reported taking up to 1 hour to listen to 15 mins; they listened, paused, rewound, wrote it down
- students felt well disposed towards lecturers who'd put in the effort
- lecturers used Audacity or Adobe Auditions, and converted them into enhanced podcasts via GarageBand; then uploaded them onto iTunes or uni's VLE; or used a 30GB iPod with microphone, and edited and file-compressed via GarageBand + iTunes; Audacity does not create MP3 files, and one must download the free add-on lame_enc.dll [I tried this and failed]
- issues in audio podcast feedback: physical separation of feedback from assignment; loss of annotations on the assignment but can be compensated for by writing in reference numbers; more personal 1-2-1; don't have to make special journey into uni to collect it; impact of spoken word can be harder hitting if the mark was not excellent; where to announce the mark? somewhere near the end? in the middle? if at the start, students won't listen to the feedback; can be listened to in peace, away from whirlwind of essay collection
- danger of too much feedback
- students often report that feedback is difficult to interpret so audio feedback may provide a new way of giving feedback
- conclusions of authors: podcasts offer advantages for assignments that do not require detailed annotations on student work
- one set of lecturers did a controlled experiment, testing students in an exam (1/2 the students had learned via podcasts, the other 1/2 just had lectures); there was no difference in results
- if you are new to podcasting, the authors advise starting with audio-only podcasts; visuals can come later
- one study showed that the least looked-at element of a multi-media-cast was the 'talking head' of the lecturer
10 steps:
1. purpose / pedagogical rationale
2. medium (audio or audio-visual)
3. convergence (integration into other e-learning)
4. authors + contributors
5. frequency + timing
6. reusability of content
7. length
8. style (presentation, interview, dialogue); informal is best, even leaving in little mistakes
9. framework of content organisation (e.g. from the engineering profcasts: introductory news item related to the subject; presentation + discussion of study-related items; end part: joke or rap); tell students what they're expected to do during and after listening + say this at the start; if they just need to listen, say this; tell students at start what will be covered
10. access (VLE, RSS)
Further reading
- J. Biggs, Teaching for Quality Learning at University, 2003, Open Univ. Press
- C. Bryan and K. Clegg, eds, Innovative Assessment in Higher Education, 2006, Routledge
- Learning and Teaching in Higher Education:
1: 89-9, 2005 (S. Brown, 'Assessment for learning')
1:3-31, 2005 (G. Gibbs + C.Simpson, 'Conditions under which assessment supports student learning')
- S.Pitts, 'Testing, testing... how do students use written feedback? Active Learning in Higher Education, 6:218-29
- P.Ramsden, Learning to Teach in Higher Education, 2nd edn, 2003, Routledge
- Penn State Uni, About podcasts at Penn State, 2006, http://podcasts.psu.edu/
- R. Sharpe et al., The undergraduate experience of blended e-learning, 2006, http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/projects/detail/litreview/lr_2006_sharpe
- Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education:
31:379-94, 2006 (M.Weaver, 'Do students value feedback? Student perceptions of tutors' written responses')
- S. Bach et al., Online Learning and Teaching in Higher Education, 2006, Open Univ. Press
For my own reference: Notes from G. Salmon and P. Edirisingha, eds, Podcasting for Learning in Universities, 2008:
- podcasts work best when 3-5 mins long (length of a typical song); max. length 10 mins
- students prefer to listen to podcasts streaming or downloaded on laptops; they don't tend to download them onto their ipods (this may be because they reserve their ipods for music and don't wish for the university to 'intrude' in their private sphere)
- podcasts only work when they are integrated into an overall teaching strategy; if they are perceived as fancy tech add-ons, students will not use them; you need a pedagogical rationale
- podcasts work well if uploaded regularly, like a broadcast, e.g. one professor of engineering at the Uni of Leicester posted a new podcast to his 50 undergrads every Sunday evening during the semester, providing feedback + feedforward + a final joke (these proved motivational); another one at fortnightly intervals
- the introduction of podcasts, for a first-time podcaster, is time-consuming
- if wanting to make radio-type podcasts with interviews and different voices, incl. current and 3rd-year students, then it is important to create a big bank of material in advance; much editing is required
- why students did not listen? lack of time was the main reason; other reasons: not aware of them; technical issues; didn't see relevance
- at the Royal Veterinary College, students captured pod- and videocasts off their own bat; they recorded, edited + published all the lectures (lecturers wore an Olympus digital dictaphone)
- podcasts useful to prepare for sessions, revise afterwards, catch up if they had to miss a session
- students reported taking up to 1 hour to listen to 15 mins; they listened, paused, rewound, wrote it down
- students felt well disposed towards lecturers who'd put in the effort
- lecturers used Audacity or Adobe Auditions, and converted them into enhanced podcasts via GarageBand; then uploaded them onto iTunes or uni's VLE; or used a 30GB iPod with microphone, and edited and file-compressed via GarageBand + iTunes; Audacity does not create MP3 files, and one must download the free add-on lame_enc.dll [I tried this and failed]
- issues in audio podcast feedback: physical separation of feedback from assignment; loss of annotations on the assignment but can be compensated for by writing in reference numbers; more personal 1-2-1; don't have to make special journey into uni to collect it; impact of spoken word can be harder hitting if the mark was not excellent; where to announce the mark? somewhere near the end? in the middle? if at the start, students won't listen to the feedback; can be listened to in peace, away from whirlwind of essay collection
- danger of too much feedback
- students often report that feedback is difficult to interpret so audio feedback may provide a new way of giving feedback
- conclusions of authors: podcasts offer advantages for assignments that do not require detailed annotations on student work
- one set of lecturers did a controlled experiment, testing students in an exam (1/2 the students had learned via podcasts, the other 1/2 just had lectures); there was no difference in results
- if you are new to podcasting, the authors advise starting with audio-only podcasts; visuals can come later
- one study showed that the least looked-at element of a multi-media-cast was the 'talking head' of the lecturer
10 steps:
1. purpose / pedagogical rationale
2. medium (audio or audio-visual)
3. convergence (integration into other e-learning)
4. authors + contributors
5. frequency + timing
6. reusability of content
7. length
8. style (presentation, interview, dialogue); informal is best, even leaving in little mistakes
9. framework of content organisation (e.g. from the engineering profcasts: introductory news item related to the subject; presentation + discussion of study-related items; end part: joke or rap); tell students what they're expected to do during and after listening + say this at the start; if they just need to listen, say this; tell students at start what will be covered
10. access (VLE, RSS)
Further reading
- J. Biggs, Teaching for Quality Learning at University, 2003, Open Univ. Press
- C. Bryan and K. Clegg, eds, Innovative Assessment in Higher Education, 2006, Routledge
- Learning and Teaching in Higher Education:
1: 89-9, 2005 (S. Brown, 'Assessment for learning')
1:3-31, 2005 (G. Gibbs + C.Simpson, 'Conditions under which assessment supports student learning')
- S.Pitts, 'Testing, testing... how do students use written feedback? Active Learning in Higher Education, 6:218-29
- P.Ramsden, Learning to Teach in Higher Education, 2nd edn, 2003, Routledge
- Penn State Uni, About podcasts at Penn State, 2006, http://podcasts.psu.edu/
- R. Sharpe et al., The undergraduate experience of blended e-learning, 2006, http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/projects/detail/litreview/lr_2006_sharpe
- Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education:
31:379-94, 2006 (M.Weaver, 'Do students value feedback? Student perceptions of tutors' written responses')
- S. Bach et al., Online Learning and Teaching in Higher Education, 2006, Open Univ. Press
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(no subject)
Date: 2009-12-19 04:47 pm (UTC)BTW, you have a malformed link here:
- Penn State Uni, About podcasts at Penn State, 2006, www.podcasts.psu.edu/about
I think all will be well if you replace it with:
- Penn State Uni, About podcasts at Penn State, 2006, http://www.podcasts.psu.edu/about
(no subject)
Date: 2009-12-20 10:38 pm (UTC)Thanks for the tip about the broken link. All fixed now!
(no subject)
Date: 2009-12-21 02:02 pm (UTC)Much of my challenge, thus far, has been keeping my voice steady and learning how to write a script.
Blogtalkradio and talkshoe.com are the two sites that I've heard of, for hosting.
I'm on PCs, so I use Audacity.
I have a blogging website with far more storage space than I need, so I could host at least a couple short podcasts.