My students say that vodcasts are used most heavily at exam time. They work as a remedial tool (may be especially good for disability and ESL students). And the videos are great for those who miss class but want to catch up before the next one (though average attendance at lectures is in excess of 80%--in evening classes of 450 people, tracked using iclickers).
The only real issue that has emerged occurs when students try to play the vodcasts wirelessly. Then the playback sometimes hiccups, making notetaking frustrating. To fix the issue, the vodcasts could be downloadable, and/or the students need to be plugged into a network for faster and more stable connectivity.
Other issues to ponder for those considering podcasting include the production costs in terms of equipment purchase or rental (camera, tripod, mic, DV capture deck, tapes, computer, software), and personnel costs (camera, editing--in my case I hired undergraduate videographers and professionals from Queen's ITS Video Multimedia Production).
Other factors being discussed and debated include the political and personal issues regarding a perceived or real loss of control over lecture material and intellectual property--in which case there is always Creative Commons Licensing. And then there is the personal issue of one's comfort with being recorded, filmed, downloaded, and publicly distributed outside the walls, halls, and towers of the campus.
I have been blogging about "professors on podcasts" and related trends in digital popular culture in the mainstream news media.
Update: I just posted David Harpp's paper (see comments below) in the eLearning links section.
Update: I just posted David Harpp's paper (see comments below) in the eLearning links section.
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I rec'd this comment via email, and am sharing with David's permission:
ReplyDeleteDavid writes: "I thought you might be interested that we have been capturing lectures since the Fall of 2000 with our “home grown” system (http://cool.mcgill.ca) (this is for the fully online material as most are imbedded within WebCT)---and now have nearly 250 courses being recorded for over 20,000 students (many counted twice for multiple courses) here at McGill. Your comments and concerns are mirrored here...
"We automatically provide MP3, MP4 and WMV files for each class----it is a LOT of storage but as the students uniformly rate COOL (COursesOnLine) from 4.4-4.9/5.0 as to how much it helps them learn, it is worth it."
Dr. David Harpp is Sir William Macdonald Professor of Chemistry at McGill in Montreal Canada. He published an article on these initiatives entitled, "Lecture Retrieval via the Web: Better Than Being There?" in The Journal of Chemical Education (81.5) May 2004
Thanks David!
Thanks, Sidney Eve. I'm really interested to learn what you are doing. We've started using podcasting in the School of Medicine over the past 2 years. The students manage the taping and upload it to our school portal (MedTech Central) where it is posted (often) along with the teacher's presentation. Each teacher must give permission and occasionally does not - recently we had a guest speaker who tells a very personal story and was not comfortable with archiving/posting even on a secure portal. Some teachers are (I think) uncomfortable with what this may do to attendance. My take on this is, if you teach in interactive and engaging ways the podcast really does not capture it and so students will come despite the availability of the podcast. However if all that you do is recite your lecture slides, I don't have a lot of problem with students missing the session and listening in later.
ReplyDelete