Use of vodcasting in higher education to improve student learning

In several countries the curricula for the different degrees of the universities is changing to adapt it to the Anglo-Saxon model of four years. In this context, several degrees must reduce the hours for classroom and this affects in a higher way to some subjects. Some of them can see reduced their teaching hours even to the half. So, it is necessary to adopt some measures in order to maintain the level of the degree (it would be very difficult to increase this level in such situation of reducing a lot of teaching hours) and to take advantage of the change and adapt the subjects to the new century and technologies. One of these measures that we can take is to use the Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) out of the classroom. In this way, we are developing a vodcast. The information in electronic form (as well as the access to this information) has very specific characteristics and the aim of all of us who make use of this information is getting the most out. Simply to prepare a text and place in cyberspace is wasting much of the potential we have at our disposal. To insert static images helps to improve the information. Accompanying text with audio enriches considerably the text. And to produce a combined video image and sound is the most comprehensive offering that can be done to anyone seeking information. Vodcasting can be a powerful tool to use in some subjects. The generalization of this idea is not probed. But we are developing our vodcast for subjects of Mathematics of the first year of Engineering degrees and it seems that the tool is very well accepted by students.