Increasing student engagement using podcasts - Case study Video Lecture | Teach Online: A Comprehensive Approach for Teaching Online - Professional Skills

a podcast is typically an audio video or
even PDF file that is broadcast over the
internet and can be downloaded to
computers or mobile devices for playback
in this case study we speak to dr. ray
Randall from the University of Leicester
in the UK Ray was a part of the Duckling
research project which incorporated
audio podcasts into two fully online
masters programs he explains how
podcasts were used to introduce
important concepts provide support for
assignments and to offer students
feedback ray also discusses the
importance of planning podcasts before
you begin and gives an overview of how
audio podcasts are made the course that
I run is called the MSC in occupational
psychology and there's an offshoot
course from that called the MSC in
psychology of work across those two
programs we have around about 55 part
time distance learning students every
year one of the reasons for setting up
the podcasts was to help students engage
with material and this material that's
in the podcast is not really
particularly new the content of it but
what is new is the fact that we're
delivering it via voice didn't just want
to play with the technology who wants to
do something that we thought we could
embed within the course going forward
particularly for our students who are
relatively time-poor having an
intervention that helps them to work in
a much more efficient way seems to be
quite a key benefit from it for them the
podcasts are embedded within blackboard
so students have an option to download
it if they wish and the way these
buttons are set up allows the podcast to
load as it's being played so it doesn't
stop the page from downloading quickly
so some of these are monologues some are
question answer sessions I'm here with
Sue and Ray to introduce you to a series
of podcasts that we've developed to help
you make best use of your dissertation
time the way we've decided to support
the various modules
that we run outside of the dissertation
and research methods is to use these
kind of podcasts here what we do is we
give students general guidance about the
assignment that they've been set the
person who set set the assignment for
them or talk them through what's
required and how I should go about
tackling it
we're getting good feedback from the
students it's universally good we'll not
really had anything anything negative
come back from the students about this
having a conversation with somebody
about some topics can help students feel
less isolated but also help them to
understand the most important parts of
the topic from a teacher's perspective I
think one of the main benefits and this
may sound a little selfish is that it's
a very efficient technology so once the
the basic skills are learned and I can
develop develop and deliver a ten minute
podcast about a topic that may take me a
day to write about so that's a very
efficient way of teachings
I think initially get into grips with
the technology does take a little bit of
time but not a huge amount of time
certainly less than myself and my
colleagues thought it would take in
terms of making a podcast itself it's
very important to have a plan as some of
think one of the things I didn't
appreciate going into it and the way
that works is to break down even a
five-minute podcast into smaller
sections so maybe four or five sections
with a beginning a middle and an end and
that being framed around some key
objectives for the podcast itself and
then I think it's about just learning
some of the the the sort of best
practice issues so keeping podcast
shorts making sure they've got a
structure and a purpose making sure that
your voice is clear on them mumbling and
making them interesting changing the
format those kind of things so that
planning is really quite crucial how do
we go about making podcasts well it's
probably not as difficult as as I
initially imagined it to be all you need
really is a headset with a microphone
and a USB headset with a microphone to
cut the crackles down a bit a laptop or
a decent computer and a piece of
software that we use calls called
audacity which is available freely to
download and what audacity is is a very
straightforward piece of audio editing
software so all the teacher simply does
is to speak into their headset that
dialogue will appear as a waveform that
can be then edited and chopped and
played around with so even if you make
lots of mistakes it's quite easy to take
those out so anybody with decent word
processing skills can use audacity
probably we have about half a day's
worth of experience
to add emphasis to add feeling to add
one of a better word emotions some of
the material that we present there are
certain aspects of any program we're
here in the human voice is going to be
particularly impactful and I think it's
just about being able to identify and
pick those out
you