Evaluation of Podcasting Project at University of Washington

Here one I thought you’d be interested in. Rather than summarize, here are excerpts from an existing summary published at www.podcastingnews.com, by David Aldrich.

“The University of Washington has published UW Podcasting: Evaluation of Year One (PDF), a report on the University’s experiences with educational podcasting.

Key Findings:

• Most students (87%) listened to the podcasts on a computer rather than an MP3 player, indicating that mobility may not be the driving factor behind student use.
• The majority of instructors reported little or no prior exposure to podcasting. The automatic recording model allowed instructors to use this technology with no reported difficulties.
• Students and instructors both found podcasts to be useful tools for helping students catch up when they missed class.
• The availability of podcasts had no impact on most students’ attendance.

According to report author Cara Lane, “The UW is not only an early adopter of podcasting, but also a pioneer in early efforts to gather student data and evaluate the current use and future potential of this new educational technology.”

Look at some Duke Stuff

We talk about the things going on at Duke with podcasting, and recently I had an opportunity to listen to a podcast from the Podcast Academy 2, in Boston, at which two professor from Duke described what they are doing with podcasts. Also at the session was a professor from the Harvard Extension School, and then a kinda contarian's view of the whole thing from Adam Weis from the Museum of Science. He doesn't have many good things to say about the approach Duke and Harvard are taking podcasting lectures, and advocates interviews and shorter, stand-alone segments of information.

The first twenty minutes focus on Duke; and Adam Weis's segment is in the latter third.
Here is the link to the video file of the session: Podcasting in Education

I'd also recommend going to the Duke podcast site referenced in the presentation. It's interesting to contrast this with the site that Frank and Company have developed for the university system. That link is Dukecast.

Maybe we can talk about these at our next get-together.