Filed under: Education
iPods on Campus
8AM. The biggest lecture hall on campus. Strong coffee and lots of it. The soft, monotonous voice of the professor--or worse, the teaching assistant--droning on and on and... C'mon. Face it. No human being is going to absorb information at 8AM in the morning, especially in the midst of severe sleep and caffeine deficiency.
Enter the iPod. Today's Wisconsin State Journal has an interesting article about how podcasts supplement and reinforce material presented in lectures. Last year, the University of Wisconsin's IT department made a big push to encourage instructors to get involved with their "Engage Podcasting" pilot program. They offered small grants and technical support to staff willing to put their class materials into podcast form.
From all reports, it's been a big success. More than half of University of Wisconsin at Madison students own digital players like iPods. The rest can download and listen to lectures on their personal computers. Students can re-listen (or, I'm sure to be more honest, listen for the first time) to lectures while riding busses, on airplanes or while jogging on treadmills.
The cutest quote of the piece? One professor says his students like "being able to stop me and rewind me."
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Ed said 4:05PM on 11-13-2006
I wish I could stop some of my lecturers. Not sure I'd bother with the rewinding bit.
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Michael said 4:07PM on 11-13-2006
This past week I was at the annual Special Interest Groups for University and College Computing Services (SIGUCCS) conference. Several sessions during the week dealt with Podcasting as a method to enhance classroom learning as well as a support mechanism for common trouble calls received by help desk personnel. Those sessions were among the most well-attended to the conference. It's quite plain that many, many colleges and universities are turning to podcasting.
As a side note, some colleges are joining forces with iTunes to have special iTunes stores available with college-specific content available for download.
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Michael said 4:19PM on 11-13-2006
As a student of the University of Wisconsin System, I must say that I wholly embrace, and commend this initiative. (I attend UW-Stevens Point. http://www.uwsp.edu)
I feel that some may question the value in this direction, whether at UW schools or other Universities attempting similar initiatives. I can forsee some arguing that students now have even more reasons *not* to attend formal lectures. I argue the validity in that point. At my University (and I suspect, many others), the individual professor creates their own attendance policy and distributes to the students via the course syllabus at the very beginning of the term. If the professor chooses to have attendance factored into the grade, then it is the student's prerogative whether or not they wish to sacrifice those points. Consequently, I cannot see how lectures by University professors (or TA's) being distributed by the University itself could be viewed as anything other than an initiative to help students learn better, while keeping up with changes in technology.
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ben said 5:03PM on 11-13-2006
does attending lectures really matter? if you do well in the class without the lecture there's no reason why a student would waste their time there. i think going to lecture is a tool that's there to be utilized as a learning aid if it's required. after all, its their (or their parent's) money to throw away and the prof gets paid either way.
at my school all of the chemistry lectures are videotaped and available for stream on the internet. you could just watch all those videos when you wanted... but its impossible to succeed in the class if you don't see the lectures at all. so its really up to the student whether he has the initiative to watch every lecture on the internet or just go to class every day. its the same with this situation.
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Shaun Aukland said 5:20PM on 11-13-2006
As a student here, I've seen some of the podcasting efforts on the UW-Madison campus myself. In particular, some of my spanish listening assignments are distributed by podcast. It's pretty cool.
I've been very happy with our IT departments efforts... especially their support of the Mac platform.
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Donald Burr said 5:45PM on 11-13-2006
Back in my college days (this was before the iPod, mind you), I used to carry around a microcassette recorder and tape all of my classes. I found this tremendously helpful for several reasons:
* It meant that I didn't have to spend quite as much effort taking notes. If I am spending my time during lectures furiously scribbling down notes, I tend to miss a lot of what the prof says or draws on the chalkboard/overhead projector/PowerPoint/whatever.
* I'm only human. Even if I'm fully awake, have had my requisite amount of caffeine and food, etc., my attention STILL tends to wander on occasion, and despite how interested in the subject matter I am, I still can (and have) missed stuff. And if it's one of those God-awful 8 AM (or worse - earlier!) classes, then forget it, all bets are off. Having an auditory record helps me to go back and fill in the gaps.
* Speed-normalizing my profs. I've had some profs that speak so slowly that I could almost count every hair on my head in the time it takes him to finish a thought. I've also had some profs that talk so fast that they would make a used car salesman's head spin. I picked up a secondhand dictation machine which has a speed control on it, and using that, I could speed up or slow down (as appropriate) them to make it intelligible.
I think making Podcasts available of lectures is a GREAT idea. Until I got my tape system perfected, I usually ended up spending a fair bit of time futzing with the recorder, trying (but rarely succeeding) to get the perfect location to place the device in order for the prof's voice to record clearly enough, etc. Since a lot of big lecture halls have their own sound system, the people who create the podcast can probably just jack their equipment directly into this, and "boom!" you get a nice clear recording.
Technical conferences (such as LinuxWorld, etc.) have been doing this for years. It's finally time that higher education caught on to this technique. I'm all for it.
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Doug Worsham said 10:24AM on 11-16-2006
I'm happy to come across this positive feedback on podcasting at UW-Madison. It is great to see some comments from Madison students that can speak directly to the benefits of educational podcasting.
As one of the instructional technologists helping instructors put their podcasts together, I can say this has been a very exciting and rewarding project for everyone involved.
While much of the buzz has been about recording lectures, we often encourage instructors to think about kinds of podcasts that might serve their students better than a lecture recording.
For example, instructors can use podcasting to record short summaries of their lectures, including answers to questions that come up after class. This gives instructors a chance to highlight key points, and supplement lecture material with clarifying points and additional examples. Other podcasters are recording interviews with experts in their field, using podcasting to bring a variety of voices into their classroom. One notable example is Personalidades a Spanish language podcast that has had a number of prominent guests from Bárbara Mujica, author of the best-seller "Frida" to the soon to be released interview with Latin Grammy winner Eddie Palmieri.
I think the campus-wide collaboration on podcasting at UWM shows that lectures is just one interesting avenue to explore in educational podcasting!
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