Published: January 24, 2006 07:26 am         

Podcasting into the future

More colleges relying on downloadable materials

Take a stroll around any college campus and you won’t get far without seeing those familiar white wires connecting a student’s ears to a little rectangular device.

iPods are everywhere. We take them to the gym, to the grocery store, to work. But nowhere are they more prevalent, it seems, than on college campuses. A quick stroll through any part of Minnesota State University or Gustavus Adolphus College reveals the true reach of Apple Computer’s music device.

So it only seems natural that iPods — and dozens of other comparable mp3 players — would eventually make their way into the classroom (and not just as a way to avoid a droning history professor).

Podcasting — the phenomenon where individuals create their own program and make it widely available for downloading — is quickly becoming a trendy way for faculty to deliver lectures.

Think about it. Recording lectures is easy. So, too, is the process of putting that recording online for student access. Students download the file to their desktop or laptop computer, then load it onto their mp3 player. In addition to their own lectures, instructors also could post unlimited supplemental material.

It’s happening on campuses all over the country, including the University of Hawaii, where an instructor actually encourages students to eschew the traditional go-to-class method of higher education.

Sounds great, right?

Well, it could be great. Embracing new technologies historically has been terrain owned by colleges and universities. But the idea of podcasting isn’t without its danger zones.

Inching closer

Jim Grabowska, a professor in Minnesota State University’s modern languages department, has been toying with the idea of infusing podcasting into his curriculum.

About a year, he said, he was given several different ipods by Wayne Sharp, director of MSU’s Academic Computer Center. Sharp had heard about a successful program at Duke where language students were downloading lab manual sound files so they could practice their languages on their own time.

So he thought about replicating that.

“I began investigating costs,” Grabowska said. “And there were a couple of problems. Could we oblige students’ investment? Would it be worth the return?”

Also, there wasn’t much content at the time Grabowska did his research. Since that time, however, podcasting has exploded.

“Anybody and their dog who has a microphone and an interest can create their own podcast,” he said. Wading through it all takes time.

As for recording a podcast of his own lectures, Grabowska says that for many of the courses he teaches the interactive nature of how he runs a classroom doesn’t lend itself to podcasting. You just sort of have to be there.

Other schools are way ahead of the podcasting game. Purdue University offers something called BoilerCast, a service that records and uploads lectures at an instructor’s request. At the University of Michigan, students in the dentistry program can have their lectures delivered to their computers or portable devices. The California Institute of Technology’s admissions office has released an 11-minute podcast for prospective students. Instructors at Stanford and Berkeley are podcasting lectures.

Even Gustavus Adolphus is getting on board. While the St. Peter college isn’t podcasting lectures yet, it is podcasting daily chapel services.

For the past six weeks, anyone anywhere in the world has had audio access to the spiritual musings of the Gustavus chapel crew. Rachel Larson, one of the campus chaplains, said the idea came from one of the college’s technology people, who said they were toying with the idea of podcasting various parts of the campus experience.

“While we would prefer everyone to come,” Larson said, “it seemed like a good outreach mechanism.”

Chapel services are very well attended. Some Wednesdays, traditionally the biggest day for chapel crowds, they may have 500-600 students, faculty and staff inside Christ Chapel at 10 a.m.

Larson says they discussed whether it would discourage people from attending, but in the end decided the good far outweighed the bad. For example, podcasting chapel services is a way to reach out to people in the community who aren’t physically able to make it to services, or to alums who live in different parts of the country or world but still yearn to hear the spiritual lessons available each day at chapel.

“We had a religion professor who, when he was still here, he was at chapel every day,” Larson says. “Now he can’t drive anymore. But (podcasted chapel services) will be available to him every day, and he can still be a part of it that way.”

We can, but

should we?

The podcasting horse is out of the barn. It’s going to be done. But is there a downside?

Grabowska says he’s been teaching an interactive course for several years. In this class, his booming voice goes out to the students sitting in front of him, as well as to a collection of students sitting in a classroom at St. Cloud State University via closed-circuit television.

It’s not podcasting, but an observation he’s made could apply to what might happen with a podcasted lecture.

“Students at remote sites suffered a loss because of a lack of contact,” he said. “They didn’t have the instructor in the room with them. They lacked a sense of a cohesive group you try to develop in a classroom.”

There’s also the issue of focus. During class, students presumably are paying attention to what the instructor is saying (wireless-connected laptops and PDAs notwithstanding). If they download a lecture and listen to it when they have time, the time they choose to listen may not be dedicated solely to learning.

“Not only are they not in a classroom, they’re on an elliptical machine at the YMCA and you say, ‘Is this an appropriate learning environment?’ Frequently for me the answer is no because they’re not paying attention to the material with the same type of intensity as when their focus is on learning.”

Larson has also thought about the drawbacks and whether embracing the latest technology is always a good thing.

“They’re plugged in so many ways,” she said. “Could it be kind of a capitulation to a culture that can be isolating for people? But, if people aren’t coming to chapel anyway,” podcasting could be a way to get the messages from chapel out to them.

Students, of course, love the idea of podcasting.

James Dye, a junior from Mankato studying business management, said the number of students who have iPods or some other mp3-playing device is growing all the time.

Dye says he’s already a podcast user. He subscribes to one from Relevant Magazine and another called Tiki Bar among others.

He thinks podcasting lectures has potential.

“It’d be nice to be able to go back to the lecture and review, go over it a few times instead of the one time you hear it in class,” Dye said.