Saturday, July 22, 2006

Podagogy

Now there's an interesting new word, apparently meaning the application of podcasting to education. For more information and some interesting examples visit http://blog.podagogy.com/

I'm very pleased to see that these authors agree with my earlier posts that the secret in higher education is not just to podcast lectures but also to seriously consider using the medium for other additional materials. This means that the podcasts/audio files can be properly structured and edited to be reasonably "listenable". Of course there's still a role for lecture recordings (see for example http://www.impala.ac.uk/MediumPodcast.wmv), but if we're looking at trying to reform teaching and learning more significantly we could consider actual live class time as a valuable resource that could be more effectively used than simply listening to content (as in the "traditional" lecture). Delivering some thought provoking content via self-study podcasts could have a role here, with the class time used for discussion, debate or other activities building on the podcast.

The podagogy folks also highlight the inexpensive way of producing lecture podcasts that are being used in the University of Michigan School of Dentistry where the students are responsible for the recordings and the uploading. Nothing like a bit of voluntary activity to help things along.

For more info on this continuation of the Broadband University theme visit the website of the new UK project Impala at http://www.impala.ac.uk - and thanks to Gilly Salmon for pointing me to this!

No comments: