I'm commenting on the article excerpted below because the use of the technology (podcasting) it describes appears to be regressive. I do believe that podcasting has some educational uses. One of those may be, as the report suggests, capturing the lecture attended by a student who later and for whatever reason would like to review the lecture. But that idea and the idea of letting students avoid the live lecture via its podcast appear to enshrine the lecture as the most effective instructional methodology. There is a mountain of evidence, much of it related to the reporter's opening observations, suggesting that the only redeeming value of the lecture is its opportunity to inspire and motivate, which it too seldom seizes. So, to capture 50-minute lectures in audio format and suggest that students can learn from listening to them (for 50 minutes) is akin to sending students to the library to read and get smart. Teaching and instruction should about guided and individually structured learning. Today's technologies give us so many new opportunities to refocus teaching away from the lecture (as content delivery featuring occasionally inspiring and motivating comments) and onto more engaging methodologies for motivating students to become active learners. Yes, podcasting can be a convenience for students when overlaid on the traditional lecture model, but can't we do better by our students with our investments in IT? What do you think?
Lectures on the Go: As more colleges use 'coursecasting,' professors are split on its place in teaching
By Brock Read, Chronicle of Higher Education, October 28, 2005
Take your typical college student — bright, curious, but probably a bit sleep-deprived and short on attention span. Stick that student in a lecture hall with a professor droning on for 50 minutes about macroeconomics or teleology. Then give the student a laptop with wireless access to the Internet, which lets him or her furtively chat with friends via instant-messenger software. What you have is a situation in which a professor's teachings do not completely sink in, says Patrick Thaddeus Jackson, an assistant professor of international relations at American University. That scenario is all too familiar to Mr. Jackson, who aptly describes his speaking style as "blitzkrieg speed" and his students as voracious consumers of technology. But the professor says he no longer worries, as he once did, that pieces of his lectures will slip through the cracks. And for that, he credits a technology known as podcasting. Podcasting allows anyone with a microphone and an Internet connection to create audio files that others can download automatically to their iPods or similar digital-audio players. Listeners can download the files one at a time, or they can subscribe to a podcast and have a series of recordings transferred to their players whenever they hook the devices up to their computers. Podcasts allow students to go over passages while, for example, working out at the gym or jogging to lunch. More and more professors, including Mr. Jackson, are turning to the technology to record their lectures and send them to their students, in what many are calling "coursecasting." The portability of coursecasting, its proponents say, makes the technology ideal for students who fall behind in class or those for whom English is a second language. And some advocates say that coursecasting can be more than just a review tool, that it can also enliven classroom interaction and help lecturers critique themselves. But many professors remain wary of the technology. Critics suggest that it will lead to empty classrooms or serve as a crutch for late-sleeping students, and some worry about coursecasting's intellectual-property implications. Chronicle subscribers can read more, if they haven't already read enough.
As one of the professors quoted in the article, I have to object to your characterization of the article's thesis. I, at least, explicitly said in the piece that recording lectures was only the first step. Much more interesting and radical are things like: involving students in the production of audio content as part of the course; replacing lectures with activities designed to build learning communities; and encouraging students to take control of their own learning processes by modifying the audio files that I produce for them to react to.
I have put up a podcast of my thoughts on the subject here.
Posted by: ProfPTJ | November 10, 2005 at 06:05 PM