The first issue is that of resources: staff time and staff expertise. As a first-time podcaster, the introduction of podcasts was an experience which was at times frustrating, ultimately rewarding, but also very time-consuming. Lack of broadcasting experience and technical expertise led me to underestimate the time needed to hone my own input, the key concepts. Student feedback suggested that these key concepts sections were helpful to their learning but they were in practice quite difficult to implement. Since the aim was to stimulate critical discussion of the concepts rather than reproduce a lecture in miniature, I abandoned the safety-net of the carefully written script adopted at the beginning in favour of more loosely structured discussions of the concepts with members of the module teaching team. However, the unscripted, dialogic nature of these sections and the range of other contributions demanded a considerable amount of editing to blend the various “voices” into a ten-minute seamless whole. The need to create a bigger “bank” of material in advance was one important lesson learnt.
The second issue is one of ownership. Although Faculty technical support was provided for this initiative within the Faculty Blended Learning Strategy, the expectation was that it would be developmental. To take this initiative further, therefore, members of the English Language and Communication teaching team will be working with the Faculty learning technologist to review key modules in order to develop a range of sustainable podcast material and other e-learning resources to support students’ learning. Experience has shown that a possible tension between institutional and pedagogic objectives may arise in the formal development of this initiative. Since our podcasts were made available via Blackboard and supported by the Faculty, the institutional view was that technical quality should be as high as possible, and that imperfections should be “cleaned up”. This admirable aim was sometimes at odds with our aim to encourage learners to generate their own material for podcasting, however ‘quick and dirty’ the recording methods were.
The third issue is the evaluation of the impact on students’ learning. The findings presented in this chapter suggest that the podcasts provided a valuable addition to the educational experience for those who participated, but how do we measure this? There is some subjective evidence in the form of seminar participation and informal student feedback: both Discussion Board activities and podcasts were non-compulsory, but the podcasts had a greater ‘take-up’ and were more successful in promoting lively seminar interaction. Furthermore, there was a noticeable reduction in failure rate through non-submission on this module compared with the previous year, although this cannot be reliably attributed to any single factor. Informal feedback from the five student mentors suggests that this group gained considerable benefit in terms of confidence, team working and leadership skills; three of them reported that prospective employers had cited the students’ role in the podcasting project as influential in their decision to offer them the position. |
