PoducateMe: Practical Solutions for Podcasting in Education
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recording/listening to lectures; as flash cards for study and review; for language
classes; and downloading class schedules.
Faculty reported greater student engagement and interest in class discussions,
field research, and independent projects incorporating iPod use. Additional
obsevations included better quality of student work, such as improved quality of
field notes resulting in better projects, more effective presentations incorporating
audio clips of sounds or interviews, and more accurate and unbiased quoting of
sources via iPod-recorded interview notes.
In addition to the successes identified in the report, there was recognition of areas in
which improvement was needed. Both faculty and students reported a lack of specific
ideas for academic uses when the program launched in the fall of 2004. Additionally,
students reported problems with the iPod's relatively short battery life when recording;
difficulty using the Duke Page on iTunes; and the inability to share files directly between
iPods. Faculty reported problems including inadequate mechanisms for storing and
disseminating MP3 content; limited academic content; and difficulties obtaining copyright
permissions.
Despite the project’s shortcomings, Duke distributed 1,750 iPods during the 2005-06
academic year and continues to refine and broaden its podcasting initiatives.
Podcasting Goes Mainstream
As educational podcasting continues to gain momentum, many institutions, including K-
12, have begun launching their own recording projects. The following list presents a brief
overview of several successful podcasting initiatives in education.
In October 2005, Stanford University was the first school to make audio content
such as lectures, interviews, commencement speeches and more, publicly
available through the iTunes Store. This distribution system has since been
made freely available by Apple to all qualifying educators through an innovative
program dubbed iTunes U (http://www.apple.com/education/solutions/itunes_u/).
At the University of Michigan, a study was conducted by dentistry students to
determine whether their peers preferred complex, content-dense lectures in
video, audio or PowerPoint format. With sixty percent of the students indicating a
preference for audio recordings, the school entered into a partnership with Apple
designed to provide dental students with access to lectures through iTunes.
Students in a computer science class at the University of Hawaii are using iPods
instead of textbooks. Course lectures are delivered via podcast, and the
professor monitors the progress of his 600 students with online quizzes. Students
are required to show up at a lecture hall only twice a semester—once for the
midterm and once for the final.
At Drexel University, a chemistry professor assigns archived lectures for
homework, then uses class time to review problems.
