PUBLICATIONS Inside Illinois Vol. 25, No. 18, April 6, 2006

Faculty members use podcasting to enhance learning

By Sharita Forrest, Assistant Editor
217-244-1072; slforres@uiuc.edu

Jim Zachary, a professor of pathobiology in the College of Veterinary Medicine, recently received an iPod, a portable audio-video player, as a gift from his children. After seeing that many of his students use similar devices, he began pondering how he could use the technology to enhance learning in the pathology course that he teaches.

Curious about creating podcasts – the delivery of audio and video files over the Internet for use on portable players and personal computers – Zachary was among the faculty and staff members who attended a recent noontime workshop offered by Educational Technology staff members of Campus Information Technologies and Educational Services that guided participants through the steps of creating podcasts.

 “A lot of my material is image-based –illustrations of hearts, lungs, livers, lesions, organ systems – so I use (several software programs to create presentations) and put stuff on the Web,” Zachary said. “I’ve learned that when students have heard the lecture and they can go back later and listen to it and review the illustrations again it reinforces the material in their minds.”

Burks Oakley II, associate vice president for academic affairs and director of UI Online, experimented with podcasting for the “Internet and American Life” course he taught for the Springfield campus. Oakley created podcasts for students in which he summarized each week’s concepts and previewed lessons for the following week. Since the course is taught entirely online, the students enjoyed being able to occasionally hear their instructor’s voice.

“I got into it so much that I had my students create podcasts just to see if they could do it,” said Oakley, who had his students introduce themselves to their classmates through podcasts and create reports describing what they did during their “virtual spring break.”

“It’s very interesting – these distance-education students that I never get to see –I got to hear their voices,” Oakley said. “One of the students lives in Austria, so being able to hear him was neat. It’s another way to personalize the class and reach the students.”

Oakley has delivered brown-bag seminars and workshops on podcasting and other new technologies for colleagues at the UI and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, a professional society dedicated to technology advancement to which he belongs. Some common misconceptions about podcasting that he has heard are that it requires an Apple iPod to download and use podcasts and a substantial investment in new software and hardware to create them.

“That’s not true. You do not need an iPod. You can download podcasts and listen to them on most computers. Most computers have sound cards and many have built-in microphones. And there are tools out there (on the Web) that allow you to create podcast files for free.”

While some peer universities are podcasting instructors’ lectures, Oakley is not convinced that recording a semester’s worth of lectures is the optimal use of the technology, except perhaps for offering students material that they missed.

In addition to the learning curve of mastering the technology, Zachary had qualms about the time involved in assembling a large number of podcasts.

“I deliver 45 lectures during the spring semester and getting those 45 lectures combined with images into podcasts would take a fair amount of time. I’m probably going to podcast a couple (of lectures) as a trial to see how much time it takes and if students find them of value,” Zachary said.

Oakley suggests that instructors use podcasting to expand upon material covered in class, such as recording interviews or seminars with experts or creating “virtual field trips” by integrating images – such as pictures of museum exhibits – with narration.

Another option is having students create content, such as recording themselves delivering reports or discussing concepts covered during lectures or in the textbook.

“Every week I’m seeing new examples of how people are using this,” Oakley said. “It’s a relatively new technology, and it’s up to faculty members to figure out exciting ways in which they can integrate it into their teaching and into their students’ learning.”

Help for Podcasters
Campus Information Technologies and Educational Services has added a new server specifically for storage of podcast content.

The ICS Podcast Server, a Macintosh OSX server with half a terabyte of capacity, is being tested. The server has been modified for the UI computing environment and includes security features.

David Ruby, a senior research programmer with the Instructional Computing Sites group at CITES who is leading the project, said that the software has been streamlined so that “you don’t have to become a computer expert to use it. We’re trying to make it so that any professor who has some content could put it out there and make it available to students.”

Although only a relatively small number of faculty members had expressed interest in podcast-related technologies, CITES decided to begin testing a dedicated server, anticipating that it would be easier to configure and expand upon a centralized system as more faculty members adopt podcasting as an instructional tool.

CITES began testing the server April 3 with a small group of users who had indicated they were interested in using it.

Ruby said that his primary concern is whether the server will have the capacity to meet user demand, since audio files can take up 1 megabyte of space per minute. “But we’re mostly trying to figure out whether a centralized approach would work and how much effort it takes to maintain something like this,” Ruby said. “If it all works, CITES could possibly put in a much bigger, industrial-strength server later.”

ICS and the CITES Educational Technologies group, who are collaborating on the project, decided to begin operating the server during the spring semester so that faculty members who want to use podcasts in their fall semester classes could begin preparing their content over the summer.

To access the ICS Podcast Server, go to http://podcast.ics.uiuc.edu. CITES invites feedback from users.

Back to Index