Teaching.IU

Context

Technology is being used extensively in higher education classrooms across the globe. Podcasting is one of these technologies. With the proliferation of iTunes, mobile devices, and free, (relatively) easy podcast-creating software, academic podcasting is exploding. If you are reading this, you may be wondering if you should join in. To help with your decision, we offer some simple guidelines on creating podcasts, some evidence on student usage of podcasts, and a little bit of reassurance.

Step-by-Step Implementation

Guidelines on creating and using podcasts:

1. Learn from others. Make yourself available to the emerging scholarship on academic podcasting. Learn from faculty whom have investigated this technology so that it positively contributes to your own teaching practices and is not just the “latest and newest shiny thing” in higher education with limited value.
2. Keep the end user in mind. Understand the student perspective so that you create a podcast that will be listened to and used within the framework of the course. While contemporary students are tech-savvy, remember that just because students use a technology in their social time and space does not mean they will use it in their academic time and space.
3. Don’t make your podcasts re-runs. Avoid using podcasting only to “lecture capture”; evidence suggests that simply recording a scripted lecture and posting it as an academic podcast will lead to failure. Make academic podcasts that are fresh and alternative perspectives to course material. Or use a podcast to introduce a topic and guide student learning about it. The novelty tends to hook students and amplify their understanding.
4. Vary the perspective. Commit to creating podcasts that enhance and supplement course materials, e.g., interviewing national experts, textbook authors, and local and regional experts on timely topics or poignant elements of assigned reading that can amplify student understanding. In fact, these types of interviews can be viewed like a guest speaker in perpetuity. Interviewing an industry expert is invaluable as a tool; a brief yet particular interview can help clarify or expand on an element of the reading in a way that students can connect with outside of the class.
5. Don’t think you will defeat students’ social habits. Certainly create and post academic podcasts so students can download them using multiple mediums and technologies, but understand students view academic podcasts as just that … academic assignments. Research tells us students will probably listen to them at home or in the library on a desktop or laptop … not in transport on a personal listening device. And this behavior is both a compliment and a good thing as it shows students are viewing the podcasts as an academic pursuit and not a social activity. In addition, while they may not take advantage of the mobile possibilities of podcasts, they do appreciate the flexibility podcasts provide for any-time learning.
6. Brevity is best. Limit podcasts to 5-15 minutes, 30 minutes maximum, if you must. Remember that you are dealing with students who are used to listening to a 3-5 minute song. A podcast longer than 15 minutes can lead to a mental drift when listening. Of course, the length of the podcast is related to its purpose. For academic podcasts, focus at most on one or two themes or lecture highlights. Create a podcast that addresses a few discrete elements. Emulate the philosophy of the PechaKucha movement, which limits PowerPoint presentations to 20 slides at 20 seconds each. “It’s a format that makes presentations concise, and keeps things moving at a rapid pace.” (pechaKucha.org)
7. Value the podcast. Hold students accountable for the podcast by making the content evident on a course assessment. Whether you choose a weekly quiz or a brief synopsis paper, you are making it clear to the students that you value the podcast content; as a result, students will value the podcast.
8. More is not better. Avoid feeling compelled to create an academic podcast for each class session or even each week, which could easily lead to this technology becoming overbearing and monotonous. Conversely, creating a single academic podcast for the entire semester may not indicate significance and students may simply not invest the time and energy to listen to that single podcast.

Effectiveness

Student View of Podcasts

Okay, you’ve spent time creating numerous, novel, innovative, and brief podcasts to enhance your course materials. How will the students respond to and use them? Research evidence suggests the following:

• When asked, students are positive about the idea of podcasts, but not all listen to them (listening rates vary between 40-75%). In general, upperclassmen are more likely to listen to podcasts than underclassmen, and graduate students more than upperclassmen. Somewhat surprising, students with a lot of experience in downloading recreational content and those with little/no experiences with downloading recreational content have displayed similar academic podcast listening rates.
• Fortunately, students who do listen to course broadcasts say they help their understanding of course concepts and enhance their learning. This is especially true when it is clear that academic podcasts has value in regard to course assessments (quiz, test, paper, etc).
• Students view academic podcasts as separate from entertainment-related ones, and generally do not make use of syndication feeds for automatic delivery of academic podcasts but download them manually. More importantly, students will likely listen to the podcast on a desktop or laptop at home or on-campus. Additionally, it is unlikely students will listen to the podcast on a mobile learning device while in-transport.
• Many non-native English speaking students find podcasts useful so that they can review in-class material that might be difficult to understand upon first hearing the material. So if you teach courses where English is a new language for the enrolled students, it is helpful if the podcast has elements that coincide with lectures notes or slides; again so they can listen to a podcast multiple times to help overcome comprehension difficulties related to language abilities. This can also help them prepare for course assessments.