IMPALA Informal Mobile Podcasting and Learning Adaptation
The Use of Podcast to Provide Lecture Recordings
Earth Sciences and Geography, Kingston University
Summary
This podcast application was developed for a level three module entitled ‘Water Resources Management’, within Earth Sciences and Geography, Kinston University. The lecturer recorded the entire lectures and made them available as podcasts on Blackboard VLE. The purpose was to provide students with an opportunity to go back to the lectures.
Context
This podcast application was developed for a level three module Water Resources Management in the School of Earth Sciences and Geography, Kingston University. The module includes a variety of different teaching methods: lectures, seminars, field trips, and student-based presentation. It was assessed through two essays, a fieldwork report, and a debate.
Rationale
The purpose of providing podcast lectures was to give students an opportunity to revisit weekly lectures as an aide-memoir and for students who missed lectures. He has not changed the core delivery mode, face-to-face lectures.
Application
The colleague in Kingston recorded his weekly lectures and made the full-lecture recordings available as podcasts. All podcasts were accessible from Blackboard VLE.
Technology
A digital recorder called Edirol was used for recording the lectures. The lecture podcasts were made available in two primary formats: WMV and MP3 for variable hardware use.
Evaluation
The impact of podcasting on students’ learning was being captured through qualitative and quantitative methods. Quantitative data was captured through a beginning-of-semester questionnaire with eighteen students, developed to gather data on students’ technical profiles, and an end-of-semester questionnaire with nineteen students, developed to gather data on students’ pattern of listening to podcasts, such as how many podcasts they listened to, time and place they listen to podcasts, and reasons for not listening. The data were analyzed using Excel employing descriptive methods.
The qualitative data was captured through two focus groups with nine students during the middle of semester and personal interviews with seven students in the end of the semester. Student interviews, lasted about an hour, were conducted using a semi-structured interview schedule developed to explore how student learning is supported by podcasts.
Staff experience of developing podcasts was gathered through a personal interview with the lecturer who developed the podcasts. Information gathered included pedagogical rationale of using podcasts, the development process, and issues encountered.
All interviews with both students and staff were recorded on a digital recorder and transcribed verbatim for analysis to identify key themes and issues. The qualitative data was analyzed using a grounded theory approach offered by Strauss and Corbin (1990).
Benefits
Revisit materials
The main benefit of providing students with lecture recordings is that students can go back to the lecture materials.
“For me the main opportunity is you can listen to the lecture again…and this the difference between the other modules don’t …you go to the lecture, what you missed, you missed. You go to the library and read the books or research from Internet. But here you have an opportunity to listen to it again.”
It offers students another opportunity to understand the lectures better.
“ Podcasts are very helpful because you can listen to it one more time, and again and again if you don’t catch the point. For me, it’s the problem of understanding everything during the lecture, so I can play it again at home, stop it, translating, understand it better, and (understand) the topic more effectively. ”
They are also very useful for revision
“Revisions as well, I’ve got a MP3 recorder. I record the lectures anyway. So it’s fantastic for revision, just to through it for exams.”
They also help students to fill in the gaps in their notes.
“It usually happens after the lecture. For instance, depending on if I have printed out the sheets (lecture notes). Occasionally I am late and I don’t have time to print it out. Then I take notes by hand. In doing that there is always a conflict of interest. There is always the information on the board which he never talks about, it is there and he talks around it, yet it is the essential part of what he is trying to talk about. So you try to write that down what he is talking about. There is so much you can write down, so very often there will be holes. So I go back to the podcasts afterwards and fill in the holes.”
Being able to access to the lecture recordings also helped students who missed lectures.
“Yeah, people who aren’t here they see the points. They can effectively see the lecture, repeat the lecture again.”
Full version information
Some students said that one advantage of listening to lecture recordings is that students can access the full-version information and learn from details.
“I tend to listen to the full version to pick up the bits I might have missed in the lecture…not as much as to the summaries because I don’t find it as important as the lectures. It carries the full content to the details listen to the full version of it.”
“Sometimes lecturers talk about slides and it is quite useful to have those comments on a recording as well.”
Offer flexibility in learning
Listening to podcasts offers flexibility in student learning. It allows students to learn anytime when it suits them. Podcasts can be listened from students’ own MP3 players. This offers opportunity to reach learners on the move.
“I download them all and listen to them while I’m on a bus or whatever…when I get a chance…”
“I also listen to podcasts in the places travelling on train. But I work at night. I work in supermarket…what I do, I put my iPod on through 10 hours at night, I listen to it…I listen to podcasts…I listen to other things like…. and I listen to books…during my working time.”
Lessons Learned
Offering students 24/7 access to learning materials
On balance, the lecturer views the use of podcasts a valuable experience. It has engaged the students in the material, particularly encouraging a culture that the teaching and learning required to succeed in this module is not confined to discrete lecture/practical/fieldwork slots, but is accessible 24/7.
Providing podcast lectures do not affect attendance
Recording lectures in their entirety and making these available to students was undertaken with a degree of trepidation. The worry for the lecturer was that these would make the students reluctant to attend lectures and pay full attention in lectures if they knew that the material would be available online. A review of the course log (lecture attendance and podcast downloads) show that this has not been the case. Students who regularly attend lectures are also the students who are revisiting the material online. Data collected from student interviews also indicated the same result.
“I think it is a really good idea and I think that a lot of lecturers are afraid that if they put podcasts on the students won’t go to their lectures but I don’t think that’s true. In this module for example people turned up.”
“I was a bit surprised, it seemed like a very good idea but I was surprised because a lot of lecturers think that students won’t go to their lectures if that is available, so I was surprised that he thought it was a good idea. I thought it was a good idea.”
Future Work
Experience in 2006/7 was limited to the use of podcasts to support a final year module. The lecturer’s learning experience was empirical and lessons have been learned that provide a springboard for future use. The intention in 2007/8 is to extend the use of podcasts to a larger first year cohort of students in a more strategic manner. Rather than produce podcasts on the fly during and immediately after individual lectures, the lectures and podcasts supporting material will be pre-planned in the summer of 2007 and a deductive evaluation process devised in tandem to assess student experiences. The module chosen at Kingston University is a first year module called ‘Understanding the Environment’, delivered to approximately 120 students.
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