This article addresses the topic of student attendance and outlines some of the emerging findings from a course in Engineering Management at the University of Bristol which makes a recording of the lecture available at the end of the each session.
Powered by ScribeFire.
The possibility of using the technologies associated with podcasting and MP3 players to augment campus based HE teaching is explored. A study demonstrating its use in five courses, and eliciting favourable learner attitude responses, is briefly reported. A range of educational applications, including and going beyond those demonstrated in the study, are suggested. The different functions entailed are identified: recording, distribution, and playback. The acceptability for each stakeholder group separately is discussed: learners, teachers, IT support. The technology's characteristics are assessed with respect to essential factors for widespread adoption: cost, ease of use (i.e. personal effort and learning costs for users), and educational benefit. The underlying technologies are briefly described, partly to indicate what the fundamental advantages are based on (independently of currently available products) and partly to allow likely longevity to be assessed. Finally some underlying principles from the viewpoint of educational research are proposed and discussed.
Powered by ScribeFire.
Sixty-two percent of the students responding indicated a desire to have podcasts of their courses available. On how students anticipate accessing the podcast, 55% prefer access via their laptop computer, 35% on a portable audio player, and 33% a desktop computer. The desire to access via a laptop may appear counter intuitive on first glance. However, as format of 'Podcasts' continue to evolve, the capabilities of this distribution approach span a range of formats; from an audio file, to enhanced podcasts which combine audio with graphics such as slides, synchronized to the audio, text files such as handouts and readings, and 'video podcasts', which can be viewed on a video enabled portable device -- as well as via a computer. As a learning tool, the majority indicate they would . . .
Powered by ScribeFire.
While many of these resources are aimed at both grade school and higher-ed teachers, they demonstrate the various ways in which PodCasting may be used for learning. We hope you find them inspiring and useful in your PodCasting efforts for corporate learning in your organization!
Just browsing the web this morning, searching for some information about Podcasting when I came across a whole heap of podcasts about Learning and Teaching in Scotland on Podcast.net .
These podcasts have been created by Learning and Teaching Scotland , an executive non-departmental public body sponsored by the Scottish Executive Education Department to help review, assess and support developments in learning and education, including the use of information and communications technology (ICT).
A decade ago, the first wave of the Net Generation began to enter college, forcing educational institutions to deal with a new population of learners with unique characteristics. With the Net Generation representing nearly 7% of the population today (Bartlett 2005) and with nearly 49.5 million students enrolled in schools in 2003 (Enrollment Management Report 2005), responding to the specific needs of this generation of learners is becoming increasingly important. The challenge of evolving pedagogy to meet the needs of Net-savvy students is daunting, but educators are assisted by the fact that this generation values education. These students learn in a different way than their predecessors did, but they do want to learn. In this article we will define the characteristics of Net Geners' learning styles and discuss how educators can make the most of these particular traits.
Survey results revealed that many tech-savvy faculty members recognize the value of blogs and podcasts as communication tools in the classroom. Key findings of the survey include:.......
iPods now double as study aids
By Ken Fuson, USA TODAY
Don't assume that Duke University students carrying Apple iPods around campus are listening to the latest hits.
Podcasting Research and its Application in Higher Education
* Abram, S. (2006). The proof is in the podding. MultiMedia & Internet@Schools, 13(3), 22-24. Retrieved June 7, 2006, from the Academic Search Premier database.
Stephen Abram, VP of Innovation at SirsiDynix, the vendor providing MCCCD library automation system, reports on a presentation by Christine Dowd, K-20 education consultant with Apple. Dowd identified several potential uses of mp3 players in the classroom, such as lecture notes, expert presentations, audio and video tours, etc. She also identified some of the uses of mp3 players in library settings. The article also includes a webliography of sites referred to in the article. One site mentioned, Free Classic Audio Books, contains podcasts of several of the books that are supplementary reading in MCCCD RDG 081/091 classes.
* Alexander, B. (2005, Summer). Podcasting and the liberal arts. The NITLE News, 4(3), 8-10. Retrieved June 8, 2006, from http://newsletter.nitle.org/v4_n3_summer2005/podcasting.php
Of initial interest in this article is the identification of several software sites and podcast directories. The author describes several examples of uses of podcasts by institutions of higher education, such as Artmobs, in which students created commentary on art works at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. Another example incorporated the sharing of podcasts created at Haverford College with students who created podcasts of discussion at the Rabat American School in Morocco. Alexander also touches on many of the questions that need to be resolved such as copyright, storage, and access issues.
* Belanger, Y. (2005). Duke University iPod First Year Experience Final Evaluation Report. Retrieved May 17, 2006, from http://cit.duke.edu/pdf/ipod_initiative_04_05.pdf
Presents the report of Duke University's experiment to present iPod devices with recording capability to 1600 entering freshman in 2004. They found that usage of the device by faculty was as a means to share class content, record class content, record supplemental materials outside of class, assist with studying class content, and file storage and transfer of materials. The report indentifies the benefits and challenges of using mp3 players in academia as well as the institutional implications of embracing the technology systemically. The continuation of the Duke Digital Initiative project is described at http://www.duke.edu/ddi/ Duke also held a Podcasting Symposium, a two-day event on September 27-28, 2005. Audio podcasts of all symposium sessions are available via DukeCast by posting the following podcast feed URL http://dukecast.oit.duke.edu/podcasts/rss/11 in any podcast aggregator application.
* Blaisdell, M. (2006, March 1). Academic mp3s: Is it iTime yet? Campus Technology. Retrieved June 21, 2006, from http://www.campus-technology.com/print.asp?ID=18001
While the Duke University podcast experiment is well-known, this article mentions the first podcasting experiment in academia conducted at Georgia College & State University (GC&SU) in 2002. Usage of podcasting at University of Dayton, University of Michigan, and Virginia Tech as well as Stanford, Drexel, and Duke Universities are also mentioned. The article mentions the ease of use and accessibility of the iPod as positives for incorporating the technology. Some of the challenges associated with the technology include administrative and technical support as well as the effort required by faculty to incorporate the technology into their courses. GC&SU has used podcasting to explore service learning with college students as mentors to middle school students. GC&SU have now created the iVillage project which uses technology-- iPods, iChat, and iSight cameras--to help establish a "virtual community" for incoming freshman. The goal of the project is to assist with retention and student success. Learn more about podcasting in academia at the panel discussion, From Tunes to Teaching, iPods on Campus, at the Summer 2006 Campus Technology Conference on August 1, 2006.
* Chan, A. and Lee, M.J.W. (2005) An MP3 a day keeps the worries away: Exploring the use of podcasting to address preconceptions and alleviate pre-class anxiety amongst undergraduate information technology students. In: Dirk HR Spennemann & Leslie Burr (eds), Good Practice in Practice. Proceedings of the Student Experience Conference 5-7th September ’05. Wagga Wagga, NSW: Charles Sturt University. Pp. 59–71. Retrieved June 8, 2006, from http://www.csu.edu.au/division/studserv/sec/papers/chan.pdf
Chan and Lee have designed a study of the use of short, well-crafted 3-5 minute podcasts to explore the impact of these podcasts on alleviating student anxiety in a technology class. The actual study is slated to take place in Fall 2005, thus this report does not cover the findings of the study, but only the preliminary design. The design of the podcasts are not intended to teach the content of the course or to remove the necessity of attending classes. The podcasts developed included two or more current or previous students of the course discussing issues related to the course in a radio talkshow style. The findings of their study are presented in their article, Exploring the potential of podcasting to deliver mobile ubiquitous learning in higher education, published in Fall 2006 issue of the Journal of Computing in Higher Education on pages 94-116. Unfortunately, this article is unavailable electronically, but can be located at the SMCC Library.
* Lim, K.Y.T. (n.d.). Now hear this -- Exploring podcasting as a tool in geography education. Retrieved June 8, 2006, from http://homepage.mac.com/voyager/brisbane_kenlim.pdf
Lim, instructor in teacher-training programs in East Asia, describes the results of his experiment in using podcasting in geography education. The author relates this use of technology to the educational theories of Vygotsky. He comments on the motivational factors for using mp3 players as well as the use of existing podcasts related to coursework, such as Education Podcast Network for general educational podcasts or 'Very Spatial' podcast for specific geography content. He considers that authoring podcasts might be performed by instructors as well as students. He considers that video episodes would be more beneficial for geography instruction; however, he mentions the significant difference for use because of podcasting being audio only versus how one must use a vodcast. He concludes by describing his use in his course and the responses that students made about this usage.
* Lum, L. (2006, March 9). The power of podcasting. Diverse: Issues in Higher Education, 23, 32-35. Retrieved June 1, 2006, from EBSCOHost Academic Search Premier.
This article provides several instances of how podcasting is being used in classes, such as Spanish civilization and by administrators for addressing student concerns (ASU's president Michael M. Crow). The article cites an one example by Dr. Don McCubbrey of University of Denver to get the views of East Asians about the topic of exporting software engineering jobs to India. The Journalism and Mass Media Department at North Carolina AT&T State University are also involved with learning using the technology. The article is supplemented with charts of data about use and creation of podcasts.
* Philpot, E. (2006). Podcasting -- Education on the go!. Community College Week, 18(16), 3-3. Retrieved June 07, 2006, from the Academic Search Premier database.
Bellevue Community College in Washington state announces a pilot podcasting project during the spring 2006 semester involving about 20 instructors. The goal of the project is to "... assess the application of podcasting in multiple academic disciplines, to determine where and how it best enhances the educational process, examine the effects of podcasting on students, identify an solve podcasting's technological challenges, assess the technology's financial requirements, and investigate the technological and legal implications of publishing podcasts on the web." (para. 3) The results of the pilot will be published on the National Workforce Center for Emerging Technologies (NWCET) website during summer 2006 (http://www.nwcet.org).
* Read, B. (2005). Lectures on the go. Chronicle of Higher Education, 52(10), A39-A42. Retrieved June 7, 2006, from the Academic Search Premier database.
In this article, Read documents several uses of podcasting of lectures at Duke, Purdue, and a new for-profit venture, Pick-a-Prof. At Purdue, the podcasting project, called BoilerCast, is allowing students to skip using the college library. The goal of the project was designed to enable students to study without needing access to computers. The article describes how one professor, Ms. Linda Herkenhoff, is using podcasting to provide review for students in her business class while creating other podcasts which allow her advanced students to expand their knowledge beyond class content. As expected, some professors express concern that students will avoid attending class; however, supporters overcome this argument either through use of attendance points or testing on content that is delivered in class visually, but not covered in the podcasts. The article also touches on intellectual property rights as they relate to podcasting of lectures.
* Smith Nash, S. (2005). Podcast Theory Gap. Z Xplanazine. Retrieved June 10, 2006, from the E-Learning Queen Blog
Nash discusses podcasting theory that online learners seem to prefer using audio and web-based information in ways that counter what researchers recommend. She discusses podcasting principles and how they relate to various learning theories and how it sometimes is counterintuitive to certain theories.
* For more information, go to https://drcoop.pbwiki.com/PodcastingInCCs and https://drcoop.pbwiki.com/UsageInClass and https://drcoop.pbwiki.com/PodcastLitReview
Podcasting Growth
Look at it grow! And this is just podcasts on Feedburner. There are many more sites that are growing just as fast.
"It doesn't take long to get out of the loop with teenagers," said Mountain View High School Principal Aaron Maybon. "They come up with new and creative ways to cheat pretty fast."
Mountain View recently enacted a ban on digital media players after school officials realized some students were downloading formulas and other material onto the players.
New technologies often have unintended uses. Take the Ipod as a case in point. It was developed with the intention of playing music (and later videos), but its applications now go well beyond that. Here are 10 rather unforeseen, even surprising, uses:
This is a web site devoted to world's best practice in student assessment in higher education, and related topics: here you'll find links to online articles, books, journals, and other relevant information. We hope that the information provided here will be of use to researchers and practitioners working in this area.
This is a web site devoted to world's best practice in online collaborative learning in higher education, and related topics: here you'll find links to online articles, books, journals, and other relevant information. We hope that the information provided here will be of use to researchers and practitioners working in this area.
Edit This Page
Research Journals with RSS feeds
Here is an OPML file with a list of RSS feeds for various research journals related to education, psychology, and technology.
Why Educational Podcasting ?… Read on
Doug Dickinson
March 2006
When you are thinking that you should find out what podcasting has to offer you and your children/students give a thought to the following:
• It provides another way of sharing and transmitting audio for teaching and learning in schools and at home
• Children and young people are able to record, produce and publish on the Internet podcasts of ......
iPods at Duke
iPod at Duke In collaboration with Apple Computer, Inc., Duke distributed 20GB Apple's iPod devices to each first-year student in August 2004 to stimulate creative uses of digital technology in academic and campus life. Since then, Duke has continued to incorporate portable digital listening and recording devices to faculty and students that has allowed for innovative instruction and learning beyond the boundaries of the classroom.
Podtrac provides advertisers with all the key metrics and tools to reach their target audience - and all the essentials that podcasters need to deliver relevant advertising to a new and growing audience.
Podtrac's podcast advertising essentials include demographic analysis and targeting, third-party measurement, content ratings, planning and purchasing, creative rotation, advertising delivery options, and more.
Podtrac, a podcasting service provider, today announced it has developed the largest podcasting demographics database worldwide, with over 55,000 detailed demographic profiles, representing more than 22 million U.S. podcast listeners and viewers.
Podtrac also announced the findings from its most recent quarterly survey. According to their survey, over half (56%) of the podcast audience is listening and viewing podcasts on their computers, 46% on a portable device, and the vast majority (88%) listen or view the entire podcast episode.
Powered by ScribeFire.
Tuesday, May 02, 2006
Podcast survey: FIR listeners are influential, educated, mobile and global
[FIR Listener Survey] The results are in from the first FIR Listener Survey that ran during April, providing us with invaluable feedback on a wide range of topics including what listeners think of the show, how and where they listen, and with some great suggestions on how to make it even better.
The survey results also provide a credible picture of who the listeners are to a podcast such as this, with a clear demographic view on listeners’ occupations, geographic locations, budget responsibility and education levels.
In all, the survey attracted 126 responses, a meaningful representative number from which to draw valid conclusions and make decisions on developing the show for the future. We estimate that each bi-weekly episode of FIR attracts between 800 and 1,000 listeners. This estimate is primarily based on download statistics from Libsyn where the MP3 files are hosted.
We will be publishing the entire survey results soon with the detailed responses to each of the 22 questions and some pretty graphs, including responses to the open-ended questions. All we will omit will be personally-identifiable information: the names of those of you who chose to provide such information when taking the survey will not be published.
In the meantime, here are some headline figures from the survey results.
Listening to FIR:
* Half of the listeners (49.2%) listen to every episode
* 45% get hold of the MP3 files via iTunes; 18% subscribe to the RSS feed; only 2.4% listen to the audiostream from the website
* Nearly two-thirds of you (61%) listen to FIR on a digital media player like an iPod
* Where you listen varies widely - 22% in the office; 16% on the commute to work, 15% at home, and 10% when jogging or doing other exercise
* Podcast-listening tends to be a solo activity - 95% of you listen to FIR by yourselves
* Over 48% of you have been listening to FIR for more than six months, and 13.5% of you have been listening since the very first episode in January 2005
Who the Listeners Are:
* 14% have senior management positions in agencies
* 13% are independent communication consultants
* Nearly 13% are managers or directors in corporate communication positions
* Over one third of you (38%) work outside the communication profession in areas as diverse as aviation, IT, environmental engineering, local government, telecommunications, publishing, utilities, energy, academia, retail, and banking
* 81% of listeners are men (so, logically, 19% are women)
* Nearly two-thirds of you (64%) have budget responsibility in your organization
* The majority of listeners (60%) falls into the 25-44 age range followed by 27% in the 45-54 range
* Over 44% have a BA, BS or other four-year degree, and 30% have a Masters, PhD or other post-graduate degree
* Just over 15% are IABC members although the majority (53%) has no professional affiliation
* 41% of you listen to no other communication-related podcasts except FIR. However, many of you also enjoy listening to podcasts by other communicators, especially Eric Schwartzman’s On The Record Online (31%), Edelman’s Earshot (27.8%), Lee Hopkins’ Better Communications (19.8%) and Joseph Jaffe’s Across the Sound (19%)
Where the Listeners Are:
* Top five countries - United States (48%), Canada (15.6%), UK (14.8%), Australia (6.6%), Netherlands (3.3%)
* Geographic breakdown - North America (64%); Europe including UK (26%); Australia (6.6%), rest of the world (3%)
Likes and Dislikes:
* Nearly all of you (97%) like Shel’s and Neville’s news and commentary discussions (and we’re very pleased about that!)
* 64% of listeners like the brief interviews we include in some episodes
* 10% of you enjoy the different outro music we play in each show while nearly a quarter (23.8%) of you don’t
* Show notes are liked by 39% of listeners (less than 1% dislike them)
* Listeners’ comments and our discussions of them were rated highly by 74% of listeners (less than 2% of you said you didn’t like this show segment)
* Many of you like the contributions from our correspondents, especially from Lee Hopkins (49%) and Eric Schwartzman (40%)
* The big dislike - over half of you (52.4%) don’t like the typically long length of the show
Recommendations:
The suggestions for what we could do with the show in its ongoing development and to improve it as a listening experience came in the open-ended comments from survey participants - collectively over 200 individual comments, and we will be posting all of them, verbatim. A clear majority of recommendations and suggestions were related to show length with requests to make it shorter.
We are listening to what you’ve told us! What we plan to do about it all will be a discussion point in a forthcoming show during May.
Again, we would like to sincerely thank every one of the 126 people who took the survey. You are truly a community.
Powered by ScribeFire.
The new generation of learners
"Different kinds of experiences lead to different brain structures" - Dr. B. Berry, Baylor College of Medicine.
According to Marc Prensky, http://www.marcprensky.com/writing/default.asp in his article Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants, children born in North America after 1985 are radically different from the previous generations because they have always had digital resources in their homes and schools, they are native speakers of technology. To these digital natives instantaneous global access to people and resources has always been available at the click of a mouse; music has always been personally portable/shareable; photographs and video are for sharing with friends and relatives. In other words, vast amounts of information are instantly available in multimodal and frequently interactive formats.
To quote Marc "Educators have slid into the 21st century—and into the digital age—still doing a great many things the old way. It's time for education leaders to raise their heads above the daily grind and observe the new landscape that's emerging. Recognizing and analyzing its characteristics will help define the education leadership with which we should be providing our students, both now and in the coming decades."
According to Susan El-Shamy in her book Training for the new and emerging generations, digital natives learn differently. They need:
1. fast paced, highly stimulating presentations
2. increased interactivity with the content and each other
3. information that relates to the learner’s world
4. multiple options for obtaining knowledge.
Medical education can respond to the needs of these students by increasing the amount of :
• multimodal content (graphic, auditory, hands on)
• active learning (read, write, discuss)
• experiential/contextual learning (job shadowing, simulation labs)
• problem based learning, team projects.
Powered by ScribeFire.
No Significant Difference Phenomenon Website
A collection of over 350 studies, reports, dissertations, and articles showing no significant difference between online multimedia learning and traditional classroom.
BoilerCast started by using current digital audio delivery technology to deliver classroom audio recordings to students at their request. With new enhancements, and the use of iTunesU, faculty can now BoilerCast audio, video, images, and PDF files. These materials are often used as review or preparation of the day’s material for use on homework assignments, labs, and review before exams. BoilerCast is a service available to all credit courses held on the West Lafayette campus and is capable of recording lectures from over 70 classrooms on campus with no lead time, and any other campus classroom with sufficient notice.
present a cognitive theory of multimedia learning from which the following six principles of instructional design are derived and tested: the split-attention principle, the spatial contiguity principle, the temporal contiguity principle, the modality principle, the redundancy principle, and the coherence principle.
powered by performancing firefox
An innovation is an idea, practice, or object that is perceived as new by an individual or other unit of adoption. The characteristics of an innovation, as perceived by the members of a social system, determine its rate of adoption. Figure 2 shows the relatively slower, and faster, rates of adoption for three different innovations. Why do certain innovations spread more quickly than others? The characteristics which determine an innovation's rate of adoption are:
(1) relative advantage, (2) compatibility, (3) complexity, (4) trialability, and (5) observability.
As with any new technology that begins to find its way into the educational arena, the most important question is not “How much is it? or “Where can I make one?” Instead, the question should center on the student: How can it help improve student learning? How can it help me be a better (read: more effective) teacher? And most importantly, how will it allow me to finally do what I couldn’t do up until now? In other words, it shouldn’t be about the “Oooh, cool!” effect to hook students – that fades surprisingly fast and only scratches the surface. The focus should be on crafting a learning environment where students can communicate, create and connect more as a function of their own growth, in turn, allowing the educator to grow as well.
A Georgia Tech professor has been running an informal experiment to test whether students who listen before class to lectures via their laptops or personal digital assistants perform better on tests.
Dr. Jim Foley
Professor, College of Computing
Georgia Institute of Technology
Atlanta, Georgia 30332-0280
(404) 385-1467
jim.foley@cc.gatech.edu
I am so fortunate that today my planning period allowed me to attend George Siemen’s Connectivism online conference where 197 people from around the world listened and chatted through George’s presentation about his connectivism theories and how they relate to education.
I am one of the context filters for K12 education. I am reflecting on the moodle and on my blog here on the discussions and presentation today. Here are my primary thoughts from my notes on his presentation.
George gave an overview of the connectivist theory. What I got out of the discussion was many other items of discussion:
powered by performancing firefox
Connectivism
Connectivism is the integration of principles explored by chaos, network, and complexity and self-organization theories. Learning is a process that occurs within nebulous environments of shifting core elements – not entirely under the control of the individual. Learning (defined as actionable knowledge) can reside outside of ourselves (within an organization or a database), is focused on connecting specialized information sets, and the connections that enable us to learn more are more important than our current state of knowing.
Connectivism is driven by the understanding that decisions are based on rapidly altering foundations. New information is continually being acquired. The ability to draw distinctions between important and unimportant information is vital. The ability to recognize when new information alters the landscape based on decisions made yesterday is also critical.
powered by performancing firefox
By JOHN AUSTIN
STAR-TELEGRAM STAFF WRITER
Kristine Ford, 19, monitors the activity in the University of Texas at Arlington's engineering department's video production studio, which produces videos of graduate classes for distribution via podcast.
STAR-TELEGRAM/DARRELL BYERS
Kristine Ford, 19, monitors the activity in the University of Texas at Arlington's engineering department's video production studio, which produces videos of graduate classes for distribution via podcast.
More photos
Distance learning has been around for decades, but thanks to the iPod and other digital music players, higher education is becoming as portable as a pop song.
By Karen Vignare
Director, MSU Global Ventures
Michigan State University
Blended learning is the "new" buzz in higher education. Many educational researchers have discovered that online learning environments are particularly useful for communications and collaboration. When you add in management and administrative tools available in most course management systems today online learning environments are fairly robust. But giving up the classroom seems a little drastic and premature. The result is using both environments-online and face-to-face-in a planned and pedagogically opportunistic way. Yet, the research on and about blended learning is less convincing than online asynchronous education. Still, many of us almost instinctively think blended learning will be good for higher education. Why? Let's start with some basics.
It was 1978 when the remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers hit the big screen, and after shuddering through hours of Hollywood-style horror, I had nightmares about waking up in a pod as a creature with no soul. Some campus podcasting detractors might say not much has changed since then.
In January, the University of Cincinnati equipped seven instructors with podcast-armbands, arming them to teach-and-record, and enabling students to jump online and download to their MP3 players the day’s lecture, student presentations, and class interactions. It’s almost as good as being there. And that, in essence, is the basis of the argument against widespread use of classroom or lecture hall podcasting.
By Mikael Blaisdell
Are campus educators and administrators prepared to make full use of the iPod’s educational potential? Our intrepid reporter gets the inside story from faculty, students, and administrators at three schools on the vanguard.
By Linda L. Briggs
TUCAPTURE's on the fly archiving of audio and video integrates with Apreso, Blackboard. Next up: handwriting capture.
If lectures are recorded during class and then offered online, will attendance drop as students attend class virtually instead of in person? That's still a big question in higher education, as it becomes more and more common to augment in class courses with an online component.
At Saint Mary’s College in Moraga, CA, social software efforts revolve around a different medium: that of podcasting. Here, offerings break down into two flavors—push and pull. Podcasts of the push variety are those which professors send out to students as part of the regular learning process. Those that pull are required of students, in lieu of or in addition to traditional homework assignments.
