Today in graduate teaching community we’re discussing the value of podcasts which rapidly becoming the standard expectation of in university lectures. There weren’t podcasts when I was a student, at least never in the classes I’d taken -though I’ve often wished I had access to complete recordings of my university lectures. Most wouldn’t be valuable, but some I would still wish to go back to long after the fact, not so much to recall content but to remember the styles and stories my notes fail to capture.
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Caitlin discusses how there is as yet little evidence for or against the value of simply recording lectures on improving student performance, however there is substantial improvement from the use of podcasts as supplemental materials.[bibcite key=Heilesen2010] Sometimes these are done by the students, sometimes put out by the professor as a weekly introduction or review, sometimes to address the most commonly asked questions in office hours. The most intriguing example I find is her discussion of math and engineering classes that have used prepared podcast to invert the system of instruction, so that class time is used to solve “homework problems” and home time to listen to the lectures. Student production also seems particularly valuable.
Thinking about the value of radio-style story-telling, sharing/reusing available resources. (Radiolab andUC TV.)
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