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Educator's Voice

Volume 7, Issue 2
February 15, 2006

Podcasting and Vodcasting Opportunities in eLearning

Would your students benefit from being able to listen to or watch your course content on demand? Podcasting can deliver your educational content for listening or viewing on your students' computers and/or portable digital audio/video players, such as a Palm Pilot, Pocket PC and, of course, the iPod. By creating podcasts, your students can listen to or watch your course content anytime, any place — even when they are not connected to the Internet.

Podcasting has genuine potential to change the face of instruction for online learning environments. This new delivery medium can be used to supplement, or in some cases, even create entirely new methods of delivering instruction.

How can podcasts enhance the learner and learning experience? This article will provide a brief overview of podcasting technology, some ideas on how it can effectively be used in eLearning settings, as well as the benefits it achieves. Although the technical aspects of podcasting will not be covered, basic design guidelines and suggestions will be provided.

What is Podcasting?
Podcasting is a way to automatically download and synchronize digital audio files from the Internet to devices that can play digital audio files. These audio files are in a digitized format that can be created by anyone with a computer and a microphone. Unlike a radio broadcast or other Web-based streaming media, podcasts provide the listeners control over when they wish to listen to the recording. All that is needed to download podcasts is an Internet connection and some free software, such as Apple's iTunes, to download the podcast. Although the word "podcast" is a combination of the words "iPod" and "broadcast," an iPod is not needed to subscribe to or listen to podcasts. All that is needed is a computer with speakers or a device that can play the downloaded digital audio files.

"Vodcasts" are identical to podcasts with the exception being that vodcasts are video-based podcasts. To play a vodcast, the end-user must have an appropriate digital video player installed on their computer (such as iTunes, QuickTime or Windows Media Player), or a portable digital video player, such as the new video iPod.

Both podcasts and vodcasts can be downloaded by anybody and are free of charge. One of the exciting features of podcasts and vodcasts is the ability to "subscribe" to them. By using RSS (Really Simple Syndication) Internet technology, the software that downloads podcasts and vodcasts constantly checks the RSS feeds that one is subscribed to. When a new podcast or vodcast is uploaded by the author, the RSS feed is updated and the software automatically knows to download the new podcast or vodcast to the end-user's computer. Although podcasts and vodcasts can be played on a computer, they can also be synchronized to an iPod or similar handheld digital audio/video player, allowing the content to be listened to or viewed while on the go.

Podcasting in Educational Settings
The most obvious use of podcasting in an educational context is to create audio or video recordings of your lectures, which allow students to listen to at their convenience. However, podcasting provides many other possibilities beyond simply recording and uploading lectures. Below is a list of potential uses of podcasting in educational settings:

News & Updates

• Instructors can record and upload audio/video announcements (such as welcome messages) within an online course.
• University departments can create and upload audio/video newsletters that could include registration deadline information, interviews of current students or professors, as well as upcoming events.
• Administrators can create and upload weekly audio/video messages intended for the entire student body or new students.

Guest Lectures & Interviews

• Instructors can upload audio or video recordings of past guest lecturers or special guests.
• Existing audio/video of industry experts, documentaries, etc. can be converted to and uploaded as a podcast.

Homework & Student Presentations

• Students can record and upload an audio or video presentation for speech or foreign language courses.
• Students can upload an audio or video recording of themselves to introduce themselves to peers.
• K-12 or ESL students can record and upload reading lessons.
• A culinary arts student can record and upload a video on how to cook an assigned recipe.
• A college botany student can create and upload an audio journal with digital photographs of trees or plants in his or her region.
• An instructor can record and upload audio feedback on a submitted homework assignment.

Virtual Field Trips or Tours

• An architecture instructor can create and upload a video on historical architecture created during his or her last visit to a foreign country.
• A history teacher can create and upload a documentary video while at a historic site or museum.
• A "guided audio tour" of a local museum can be created and uploaded for students to download into their portable digital media player. Students can then take their portable digital media player to the museum and listen to the guided audio tour as they walk through the museum.
• An engineering professor can videotape a machine inside a manufacturing plant and upload it with audio commentary.

Audio and/or Video-Sensitive Subject Matter

• A French teacher can record and upload audio recordings of vocabulary lessons.
• An ESL student can record and upload his or her reading assignments.
• A communications professor can upload an existing video on nonverbal communications.
• A chemistry teacher can record and upload a video on how magnesium burns.

Recruiting & Marketing

• School officials can create and upload high-quality marketing videos for prospective students.
• Special interest groups (such as clubs, fraternities, or on-campus professional organizations) can create and upload audio/video announcements and marketing material

Benefits of Podcasting
Podcasting is a fast, convenient and low-cost way to extend the eLearning offering and improve the learning experience. Below is a list of benefits that are achieved through podcasting:

1. Enhanced Learning Experience
   Learners can listen to podcast material multiple times, allowing them the opportunity to grasp complicated concepts as well as study and review content more effectively.
2. Flexibility
   One of the largest benefits of eLearning is that it provides an asynchronous learning environment that allows students to access course content any time, any place. Podcasting provides the same.
3. Immediacy
   Instead of just reading text on-screen, students can develop more meaningful relationships between class peers and their instructors through audio and visual communication.
4. Supplementation
   Podcasts can supplement current online course material, providing a more robust and enhanced educational offering.
5. 508 Compliance
   Podcasting provides audio and video resources within an online course for blind and deaf students.
6. Portability
   Since podcasts can be downloaded to portable digital audio/video players, distance learners do not need to be in front of their computer at all times to receive instructional material.
7. Multi-Modal Learning
   Podcasts provide multiple ways of learning the subject matter. The more ways people can learn something, the more they will genuinely understand it.
8. Multitasking
   As our lives constantly get busier, podcasting allows for one to multitask. For example, students can listen to a podcast while they exercise or clean house.
9. Low Development Cost
   Creating podcasts requires inexpensive hardware and software — most of which people likely already have, such as a computer microphone.
10. Low Cost to the Learner
    Podcasts and the computer software to listen to them are free.

How do I create a Podcast or Vodcast?
Creating a podcast isn't simple, but it's not too hard, either. You'll need a small combination of hardware and software in order to create your own recordings. Creating a vodcast, however, requires a digital camcorder as well as editing software.

Step 1: Have Something Worth Saying or Showing
Before you decide to create a podcast, make sure that what you plan will be of interest to your learners. If you don't have anything to say or show that people find interesting, they likely won't come back for the next "episode." The key message here is simple: Don't create a podcast just because you feel like talking about something (i.e., just because you can).

Step 2: Determine Your Goals and Objectives
Although you may have an interesting idea, you need to make sure that it has educational value for your students in that it "accomplishes" something. Just as you would create learning objectives for the lessons in your course, you need to do the same for your podcasts. As you determine your goals, keep in mind how your students will most likely be using your podcasts and how they will most benefit from them.

Step 3: Keep it Short and Simple
In addition to making sure your podcast provides educational value, the length of your podcast is a very important consideration. Podcasts of entire lectures often come across overly formal, and the length and scope of your podcast should not communicate an inappropriate amount of material.

People like "shortcasts." Shorter podcasts are more likely to get your learners to listen. This is not to say that a one-hour podcast won't be effective, but you may want to start off with shorter ones (15-20 minutes). The longer the podcast, the more of a time commitment the learner must make.

Effective podcasts focus on important concepts or a single task. Since many of your students will be listening to your podcast while multitasking (exercising, driving to work, etc.), they will likely not be taking notes. Vodcasts, on the other hand, require the full attention of the learner due to the audio and video aspect. Therefore, more complex material (such as how to assemble a widget) may be more appropriate. However, if assembling the widget is a complex, time-consuming process, you may want to chunk the content into multiple podcasts.

Step 4: Scripting and Storyboarding
If you are a creative individual, the previous steps should be fun and relatively easy to accomplish. Scripting and storyboarding your podcast, on the other hand, is a lot of work — all the more reason to keep it short and simple. If you have ever created audio scripts for commercials or Web-based training, you understand that scriptwriting and storyboarding are time-consuming processes.

I will not go into storyboarding or scripting techniques in this article as they are a matter of personal preference; however, I will suggest that you prepare as much as possible and rehearse. If you are interviewing someone, write your questions down. If you are planning a vodcast, you need to practice not only what to say, but also the process you are demonstrating. Lack of preparation will be evident as you likely will have to conduct multiple takes until you get it right. Don't expect to get it right on the first try. Creating a quality podcast takes preparation and practice.

Step 4: Producing a Quality Podcast
You don't need a lot of hardware to record a quality podcast, and it doesn't matter whether you use a Mac or a PC. For audio podcasts, a "quality" microphone is the most important piece of hardware you'll need. Although the internal microphone included with most computers will work, they are not of good quality and have the tendency to pick up ambient sounds, such as the fan noise of the computer, as well as anything you move on your desk while recording. You will likely spend less than $50 for a USB noise-canceling microphone.

To create a vodcast you will need a digital camcorder. If your school does not have one to loan out, you can purchase a quality model for around $500. I know this isn't small change, but you have to remember that this is digital video.

Recording your own voice is relatively simple, and there are a variety of PC and Mac programs that can do this, many of which are free. More advanced software is also available that will allow you to edit and mix multiple tracks (such as fading in and out with music), although it is not necessary for a quality end product.

Obviously, video editing is more complex than editing just audio. There is a learning curve involved, but it's not impossible to use. Decent video authoring software can be purchased for as little as $50.

Unless you plan on creating vodcasts and don't have access to a digital camcorder, creating quality podcasts is very inexpensive, if not free. Creating quality podcasts is like creating any type of quality content, be it a journal article, corporate presentation material or a television commercial. Your learners will take notice and appreciate your attention to quality and detail.

Step 5: Converting and Publishing Your Podcast
Although it is not the intention of this article to provide technical instruction on converting and uploading your podcasts, there are a few important issues that should be briefly discussed. The first and most important of these is the conversion of your files to a format that is easy to distribute online.

When you record your audio or video files, they will most likely be in an uncompressed format. A 30-minute uncompressed audio file (in WAV format) can be as large as 300MB and an uncompressed 30-minute video file can be many gigabytes. The size of such files is not suitable for download. There are many software tools, many of which again are free, that can compress your files. It is recommended that your audio files be compressed to MP3 format and your video files to QuickTime or MPEG format. The goal of compression is to create the smallest file size possible without dramatically decreasing quality. Most conversion software contains preset configurations to help you do this.

The final step is to publish your podcast. The good news (besides being the last step) is that it is one of the easiest steps in the process. Basically, you will first need to set up a podcast RSS "feed" URL on your Web site. This RSS feed is about 15 lines of simple code that will require you to change some basic parameters (a very straightforward article on how to set up RSS feeds can be found at www.podcastingnews.com/articles/Understanding_RSS_Feeds.html. Once you have the URL feed established, you will need to publish your podcast. Your podcast can be easily published in iTunes with just a few clicks. It really is that easy.

Summary
Podcasting and vodcasting have tremendous potential for eLearning. There is already a wide range of educational content being developed for and delivered by podcasting. It is important for us as educators to think constantly of the possibilities and potential this ingenious technology has to offer.

However, we must also be cautious, as with any technology, that we use it appropriately and with the best intentions. Creating podcasts because the technology is readily available is simply not acceptable. As with any instructional endeavor, podcasting in eLearning environments must be in alignment with your instructional goals and objectives and simultaneously provide a creative, interesting and genuine learning experience for your students.

On that note, I encourage you to think creatively and to explore the opportunities that podcasting and vodcasting present to your subject matter and online learning strategy.

Good luck and good teaching!

       —Eric Rohrer, M.S.Ed.

TIP

Using New, Enhanced Gradebook Features

The eCollege Gradebook has been enhanced to provide additional benefits for instructors and students. The new features include:

1. Improved Gradebook user interface for faculty and students
2. Gradebook weighting
3. Extra credit grading item
4. Excluded grading item (ability to make practice assignments/self-checks excluded from the course grade)
5. Select all option for sharing grades with students

Steps to take:

1. Gradebook weighting is turned on by selecting the Use Weighted Calculations check box under the Preferences tab in the Setup Gradebook area of the Gradebook. Note that the Use Points box must also be checked (this is the default for the Gradebook.)
2. Extra Credit grades are identified by selecting the Extra Credit tab in the Assign Points/Weights area of the Gradebook. Then, select the check box for each item to be identified for extra credit.
3. Excluded grades are identified by selecting the Exclude from Course Grade tab in the Assign Points/Weights area of the Gradebook. Then, select the check box for each item to be identified for exclusion from course grade.

Available Help:

1. For additional information, click the Help button in the top right of any course in which you are enrolled as the Instructor. Within the Help area, see Gradebook &emdash; the fifth unit.
2. When you select the Gradebook tool in your course you will see new graphic icons for Extra Credit (a green plus sign) and Excluded Grade (a red circle with a slash) in the Gradebook key at the bottom of the page.
   
          —Ken Switzer, Ph.D.