Enhancing Teaching & Learning with Podcasting

Abstract

Podcasting (name after the iPod) - the use of MP3 files as a mean of broadcasting and content distribution has been extremely popular among youngsters in the past few years. It also attracts the attention of educators and its application in teaching and learning has already been explored widely. Traditionally, lecturers will upload essential materials to the course websites and assume students will download before lectures. However, only a few of motivated students will actively access the websites and download the materials for preparation. Rather than letting the students to adopt a passive learning style, we propose to adopt this newly emergent technology, podcasting, to actively push the materials to the students. This pilot project will examine, with critical evaluation, how Podcasting can be used to support reinforcement learning. It is obvious that use of Podcasting in learning, also known as m-learning (m for mobile), cannot and should not replace other main-stream learning strategies. We would therefore focus on providing an additional way to enable the students (especially the weaker ones) to learn anytime, anywhere. This pilot project will be conducted in three stages: investigation, case study and evaluation. Investigation will involve sorting out the technical details of doing Podcasting as well as establishment of good practices applicable to CityU. The case study will introduce Podcasting to two selected courses from different disciplines. Evaluation will then be performed qualitatively from the feedback of students and quantitatively by analyzing the course results. Throughout the project, integration with our BlackBoard system to deliver Podcasting will be a main emphasis.