A podcast is a digital
audio or video file or recording, usually part of a themed series that can be downloaded from a website to a media player or computer (Dictionary.com,
2016). Instructors can incorporate
podcast to enhance or vary their students’ class experience by either pre-recording
lessons, recording live face-to-face instruction, finding relative podcast that
expound on a lesson topic or assigning podcast creation to their students as
part of a project. By adopting the use of podcast and changing it from an
entertainment tool to a learning tool, educators are also able to personalize
and humanize e-Learning by including rich media components into online courses
in order to engage students in an active, meaningful learning environment
(Merhi, 2015).
There are both pros and cons to integrating podcast into
college curriculum. Podcast can work
with the most basic internet connections and can be saved, transferred and
retrieved on portable devices such as cell phones and MP3 players (King &
Cox, 2011, p. 37). Using podcast allows
instructors to tap into different learning styles of the students by providing
both audio and visual content. Podcast tend to break up the monotony of just
reading. It can also benefit students
with hearing or attention deficits as they can play back the recording to
review sections that may have been difficult for them to understand or follow during
the actual lesson (King & Cox, 2011, p. 37). If used correctly, podcast can benefit the
instructor when used to reiterate normal problem areas that students generally
run into. The recorded lessons can minimize
the time spent answering these questions by giving the student the flexibility
to playback the recording as many times as they may need in order to further
grasp the material.
A con is the time it may take in order to prepare the
podcast to include as a part of the lesson.
Another con is that you have to continually update the recordings as information
may become obsolete. Instructors must be able to find the happy
medium when using podcast or they will not be well received by their students.
Danella
King, K. P., & Cox, T. D. (Eds.). (2011). The
professor's guide to taming technology: Leveraging digital media, Web
2.0, and more for learning. Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing.
Merhi, M. I. (2015). Factors influencing higher education students
to adopt podcast: An empirical study. Computers & Education, 83,
32-43. Retrieved October 5, 2016, from
http://www.sciencedirect.com.er.lib.k-state.edu/science/article/pii/S0360131514002917
podcast.
(n.d.). Dictionary.com Unabridged. Retrieved October 5, 2016 from
Dictionary.com website http://www.dictionary.com/browse/podcast
