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Case Study: University of Glasgow, Use of podcasting in Philosophy

Summary

• From 1996-98: development of web-based self-assessment exercises to enable level 1 and 2 students to establish a grounding in the meaning and use of complex terms and concepts.
• From 1999-00: setting up of online seminars for the Senior Honours Kant Class in cooperation with colleagues from the Open University -> over ambitious project as students did not feel so confident with technology (First Class) or Kantian terminology and they were unwilling to express in public their thoughts.
• From 2001-02: Use of electronic handsets in Logic Lectures-encouraging students who were not actively participating to engage in an anonymous environment -> great success-full class participation-immediate feedback to students and to the lecturer and according to the students themselves it was a sounding success.
• From 2002-03: Part of continuous assessment-design and develop a web page relevant to their seminar topic (Third year non-Honours courses) which students saw as an advantage on structuring their arguments or claims graphically before writing essays in the future.
• From 2005-06: Recording of Kant & Consciousness lectures using an iPod and making these sound files available to the students after class-Introduction to Moodle for each of the five classes taught.

Why this elearning approach was used

• Susan Stuart was keen to try new things and one colleague, Steve Draper (Psychology) had a student (Joe Maguire) from Computing Science whom after examining the benefits of mobile learning, needed a "guinea pig". She tried this approach and the student feedback was so positive that they decided to continue with the experiment.
• There was no institutional policy but their success encouraged others to try this approach too.

The context in which it was used

• Both courses (Psychology and Philosophy) are for final Year students.
• Psychology students are extremely motivated and greedy for any learning support or additional resources.
• Philosophy students in Kant class show great deal of determination.
• Both classes work very hard and repay the effort taken on their behalf.

The design

• Joe Maguire lent Susan his iPod.
• Susan recorded her lectures.
• At the end of the week he retrieved the iPod and downloaded the files and made them available on a University website.
• The students were given the URL and a password -> access and download recordings from anywhere.
• RSS feed: MP3s into podcasts.
• Teaching and learning success due to:

1.      Watching and responding to students reactions in real time.

2.      A dynamic and reciprocal interaction that lends itself to a rapid contingency in her teaching and student learning.

3.      A lot of dialogue in her lectures-students think, puzzle, ask questions.

4.      Additional comments on the Moodle for all of them to think.

Implementation of this learning approach

• There is a need to some spare networked disk space to put up audio (MP3s) and video (MPGs) files for students.
• Possible training on how to turn odd audio, file formats like AIFF into usable MP3s.
• Informal evaluation-enthusiastic students for the use of recording. They enjoyed being able to replay the lectures and seminars to catch bits they'd missed or did not understand the first time. Students mentioned that they will use podcasts when preparing and writing essays and for revision for their examinations.