The effectiveness of podcasting in education in universities

Part1:
Benefit proposing by podcasting:

1. Increasing flexibility

The distribution of course material in video and audio formats, to provide greater flexibility to learners, has been a common characteristic of distance learning programs for a number of years. Digital technologies have enhanced this process through the use of digital audio and video recordings that can be distributed across the Internet directly to learners' desktops. More recently, students can subscribe to automatic downloads of new material as it becomes available, so it can be accessed by the student in their own time and place. This form of automatic distribution of material certainly increases the learner's flexibility in accessing the course content.

2. Increasing accessibility:

The ability to access this material on portable devices such as MP3 players can enable more mobile access to the material. for short, mobile learning is used widely in distance learning programs because of the relative ease in which the digital resources can be produced and because it facilitates the needs of the learner and enhance their learning experience

3. Enhancing learning:

As well as its increased use in distance education programs, podcasting has also become popular with on campus courses. the degree to which students are using new and emerging technologies in their daily lives opens up several opportunities to embed these technologies into the university experience. What’s more, the increasing use of podcasting in education has the potential to significantly change the teaching and learning experience of students.

Literature review:

Bongey, Cizadlo and Kalnbach (2006) conducted research in a United States college into the use of recorded podcast lectures. Their research aimed to examine the effect of podcasts on student attendance, the students' preferred use of podcasts, and the students' perceptions of their academic impact. The research utilised observations, attendance records, server statistics and a survey distributed to the 246 participating biology students (response rate 67%). The study found that the availability of the podcasts did not lead to declines in attendance, with 95% of students indicating that they did not attend class less often. This self reporting was supported by observations of attendance. While 70% of the survey respondents indicated that they had used the podcasting to improve their understanding of the course content, similar to the research by Lazzari (2008) referred to previously, 94% of the respondents indicated that they preferred the lecture over the podcast.

Frydenberg, M. (2006)mentioned in his paper that the recent increased popularity of portable media players has made podcasting an attractive option for many college professors to distribute their course lectures to students. He describes one information technology course in a business college where the students, rather than the teacher, create podcasts based on the course lectures materials. In the process, students learn to use software tools to create multimedia presentations that convey their under-standing of course topics, as well as the technologies required to post them as podcasts. An end-of-semester survey gave insights into how students used the podcasts on their mobile devices to contribute to their learning, and an analysis of web server logs suggested that a majority of the students downloaded the podcasts to their portable media players, laptops, or PDAs

Part2:
Research methodology
We are going to do an experimental research (quantitative research).The type of experimental research is a short one. That means we will just do one round research.
1. Research questions
We use John Biggs SOLO Structure of the Observed Learning Outcomes as the measurements of effectiveness. The two variables are time of using podcasting each week and academic areas. We are exploring the learning outcomes according to the variables’ changing.
2.Hypotheses

Two variables might affect the outcomes of using podcasting in university teaching and learning. This 2 graphs is expecting the experimental results.
3. Methods
(1).Observation,interview,questionnaire
(2).Pilot research
participants numbers
teachers 2
students 10
(3).Target participants
2 universities, each for 100 students, each for 5 teachers,
Students from 5 different academic areas: education, engineering, arts, language, philosophy. And one teacher for each academic area.
4. Data collection
Data is coming from questionnaire (Google docs), interview and observation
The assessment is based on the SOLO assessment.


Data analysis
SPSS system
Google docs

Reference:

1. Bongey S., Cizadlo, G. & Kalnbach, L. (2006). Explorations in course-casting: Podcasts in higher education. Campus-Wide Information Systems, 23(5), 350-367.

2. Frydenberg, M. (2006). Principles and pedagogy: The two P's of podcasting in the information technology classroom. In Proceedings of the Information Systems Education Conference 2006, v23 (Dallas). [verified 30 May 2009]

3. Oliver McGarr(2009). A review of podcasting in higher education: Its influence on the traditional lecture. Australasian Journal of Educational Technology 2009, 25(3), 309-321.