The “Education Life” supplement of the New York Times on November 6 had a short article about the use of iPods as instructional technology in American colleges. Podcasting lectures, that is, audio-recording lectures for students to download on their iPods, or other portable players is becoming increasingly common in universities nationwide, starting with the well publicized case of Duke University. Last year, Duke gave its entering students free iPods with which they could listen to lectures whenever and wherever… that is, not in the classroom.
One of the main arguments in favor of podcasting in academia is that it makes it easier for students to just listen to the lecture and participate without getting frantic about taking good notes. However, it is also feared that students will increasingly desert the classroom if they have auditory access to what is going on in the classroom. Podcasting does not seem radically different from lower forms of technology college students and faculty have been using for decades, such as tape recording lectures, or more recently, posting lecture notes on Blackboard. All these practices aim to facilitate learning. However, I wonder to what extent making learning “effortless” leads to better learning. There are already online debates about the use of podcasting in college in several blogs expressing different opinions about how this tool could be most effectively used. While I see great value in these aids, especially for students with disabilities or for those juggling college with a number of other responsibilities such as parenthood, full time work, etc., I also see the risk of mass producing higher education. For our purposes, I wonder how it would affect what we are trying to accomplish as writing and communication fellows as it changes the nature of classroom interaction.
Because it is a recent development in instructional technology, I did not see many evaluations of its impact on learning. Duke published an evaluation of its iPod initiative in June 2005. While it seems like students just loved using their iPods, the evaluators admitted that “the extent to which having access to lecture recordings improves student performance, impacts class attendance, or enhances students’ course experiences remains unknown.” That is, we don’t know if it actually does what it is intended to do.
Well, this might be the cynicism of a technophobe who never made the move from a Discman to an mp3 or an iPod… Does anybody know any research evaluating the impact of podcasting or similar technologies on learning?
I don’t know if there is anything published yet on the effectiveness of podcasting in instructional contexts. I do know that educational podcastis are getting increasingly popular. The Education Podcast Network, for example, offers a sizable collection of free educational podasts in a whole range of disciplines. By the way, I should add that you don’t need an iPod to listen to a podcast. “Podcast” is a misnomer in favor of Steve Jobs.
Reply to Mikhail
Great questions, Nida. I am sure the podcasting research is coming soon.
I would argue that there’s way too much lecturing going on in college classrooms. There are studies about that not being the most effective way to teach in most cases. (The exceptions are content-area courses, nursing, statistics, chemistry, and so on. Many of these are often the jumbo lecture classes). But for most fields in the social sciences and humanities, most of the time, lecturing–in the traditional sense of an hour-long lecture–is not ideal. Mixing with experiential learning and participatory discussions is much better. So if the latter is the model, a podcast of the class would be like listening to a party you missed: definitely not as good as the real thing, by a long shot, but maybe worth a listen if you need to hear some of the conversations that went on.
Further to what Mikhail says, you don’t even need an mp3 player to listen to podcasts; iTunes is free for a Windows and Mac users, and you can download it here.
Reply to Kate
You don’t even need iTunes. You can listen to podcasts through your browser with the appropriate plugin as is the case with EPN.
Reply to Mikhail
Very interesting, Nida. In response to the question of whether this kind of technology might encourage students to skip class, I would say, based only on personal experience, that the easier it is for students to justify not showing up for class, the more they will tend to skip.
Reply to Anthony