Filed under: Education, Podcasting
Teaching via iPod
Newsweek has an intriguing article about class lectures being made available in mp3 for students. Professors in major universities have been making audio recordings of coursework for quite some time, but recently some of these lecture-casts have replaced actual human-led courses. Personally I enjoyed having real interaction with my professors during class (which is why I picked courses with low enrollment and hung out in office hours). I can see, however, how this would be useful for distance learning. What do you think? Should some classes be mp3/videocast only?
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
danb said 7:37PM on 11-23-2005
I am undergraduate in economics and politics currently in my final year. I think that for the economics portion of the course mp3 cast would be pretty useless. Without the attached diagrams/models/equations the lecture would be particularly difficult to gain from. For my politics lectures however lecture casts are great.
I have been using my iPod mic combo for a while now and distributing my lectures via my blog for other students on my course. With lecturer permission naturally. It's great come revision and much more helpful than a Powerpoint presentation. If only I could somehow index a transcript of the lecture for better searching, now that would be good.
As for economics, I await my lecturer's vodcast with accompaning stills.
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Andrew said 9:56PM on 11-23-2005
I am currently taking an online marketing class which uses real audio files. While I'd prefer that they be mp3s, it gets the job done. The class lectures are supplemtented with a website that contains notes and pictures, charts, etc...
This method of teaching works but it's no substitute for the real thing.
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Noel said 10:53PM on 11-23-2005
I've taken a virtual course coupled with an active classroom forum. It worked great for some I think, but for me... too easy to get distracted and get behind in course work. I think it's great for those 'independent' self-taught, self-motivated type. I on the other hand need the commitment of daily class attendance.
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Mike Doan said 10:48PM on 11-24-2005
Having lectures on MP3 is a great way to *supplement* your notes from the class. In college I had a economics professor who encouraged us to record lectures. The recordings were useful in filling in the blanks in my class notes (too busy drawing those charts and graphs).
Some professor didn't want to be recorded because they claimed that the lectures were their intellectual property. That stance may hinder the number of lecture-casts available.
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Pablo said 3:44PM on 11-25-2005
A very nice initiative, which is not mentioned in the Newsweek article, is Open Course Ware from the MIT. They have free audio and video lectures of many undergraduate and graduate courses. You can check them out at: http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Global/OCWHelp/avocw.htm
I personally recommend the video lectures on Physics by Walter Lewin. Really cool stuff.
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Rahul Malhotra said 6:07AM on 12-08-2005
Could someone send me some links to all possible electrical engineering courses that are available in the domain of electrical engineering especiallyinformation theory/statistical signal processing etc.
Podcasts preferrable!
Hare Krishna
Rahul
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