Innovative pedagogical and psychological perspectives of podcasts

Podcasting, being a new form of audio distribution offering the possibility to be loaded on personal mobile devices from teachers’, student’, university’s websites and blogs, is discussed as an activity with potential in learning and teaching. The existing and potential varieties of podcasts represent sources for learning, converging, socializing. In this paper, podcasting is supported as an innovative approach to stimulate university students’ reflection, specifically on epistemic questions and concepts. Both theoretical and practical background information is provided to clarify the rationale of using this method in higher education. 1. Podcasts and Podcasting: An introduction A podcast is defined as a digital media file or series of such files that is distributed over the Internet using syndication feeds for playback on portable media players and personal computers (Wikipedia, 2007). Exemplary for podcast is its form of distribution, its ease of use and creation and the wide-scale, ubiquitous access to it. Podcasts allow asynchronous transfer of information, meaning the audience has remote access to them. Podcasts are an alternative way to deliver information and for entertaining. Podcasts and podcasting are favoured by the increasing number of Mp3 players and the available free software and Internet tools for podcasting. Educators are facing the massive invasion of these digital devices in the classroom and are searching for meaningful ways to use them to enrich learning, rather than just reproduce old methodologies with a new generation of technology (Coghlan, 2007). 2. Pedagogical and psychological perspectives of the educational use of podcasts 2.1 Audio in education Audio has been used in education for many years and its benefits for distance and face-to-face learning are well studied. A range of studies conclude that audiotapes, used for feed-back, bring a more positive experience to learners, than written feed-back (Carson & McTansey, 1978; Kirschner, van den Brink & Meester, 1991; Logan, Logan Fuller & Deneby, 1976). Tutor-initiated audio embedded into email messages yielded increased student participation in group activities, and added a sense of online community and satisfaction with the overall learning experience (Woods & Keeler, 2001). Similarities exist between audio cassettes and podcasts (aside the distribution form), such as the freedom they give to the listener (i.e., the learner) to listen and execute activities in parallel to other learning activities, to listen anytime s/he wants and to have control over the record/playback hardware. Both are easy to produce and distribute, advantages are even more prominent for the podcasts. All of the pedagogical and control advantages, identified in the studies on audio cassettes, are applicable for podcasts. The question is, what are the real effect of podcasts on learning, above the primarily enthusiasm? 1 CNN Podcast directory: http://www.podcastingnews.com/forum/links.php?id=508 ; BBC Podcast : http://bbc.podcast.com/ 2 In 2006, a marketing research in the USA shows that one of five Americans aged over 12 owns an Mp3 player. The British Market Research Bureau revealed that 32 per cent of UK adults owned an Mp3 player; where 69 per cent amongst the 16 – 24 age group. Nineteen per cent of the UK internet users (i.e., 73% of the adult population) downloaded a podcast during Sept 2006 – Feb 2007. About 4 million UK adults in 2007 use their phones as Mp3 players (cited in Edirisingha and al., 2007). ha l-0 01 97 20 1, v er si on 1 14 D ec 2 00 7 Author manuscript, published in "Towards a Philosophy of Telecommunications Convergence Sept. 27–29, 2007, Budapest : Hungary (2007)"