In 2004, Duke University in North Carolina gave 1600 freshmen free iPods. Tempting enrollment incentive, or visionary application of must-have mp3 player as an educational tool?
Five years later it appears that, by promoting iPods as cutting-edge educational technology, Duke Administration was really onto something.
The journal Computers & Education recently published a study claiming that podcasts of college lectures can be more effective than the real thing.
A class of 64 psychology students was divided into two groups. The first attended a regular course lecture and the second only listened to a podcast of the lecture. All students received printouts of the PowerPoint slides used in the lecture.
The results showed significantly higher scores (71 percent average) on an exam of the course material for students in the podcast group. Those who attended the in-class lecture scored 62.5 percent. Scores for students who took notes during the podcast lecture rose to 77 percent.
The researchers don’t claim their study’s results are any indication that audio copies of lectures could or should replace actual professors, or regular class attendance. Instead, the podcasts give students a chance to play the course material repeatedly. In a traditional lecture setting, although students can ask questions, they can only hear the material once. Students with a podcast lecture, however, are more likely to listen to the lecture more than once, as did two thirds of the students in this study’s podcast group.
Even with printouts of PowerPoint slides before lecture, students madly jotting down notes on a previous topic can miss other concepts in a lecture. If they could go back and listen to the professor again, they’d likely be able focus more on the material and less on detailed note taking.
Learning by podcast is an idea whose time is now. Web sites like iTunes U and Academic Earth offer a wealth of recorded lectures to highschool and college students and the public alike. Podcasts like Stuff You Should Know offer continuing education for anyone with a desire to learn and be entertained while stuck in traffic, waiting for a bus, or jogging on a treadmill.
College, continuing education, and high school students everywhere are learning that Spacelocker is a quick and easy way to organize and keep their podcasts—and a whole lot more—just a click away. Spacelocker users enjoy instant access to all their sites, friends, pictures, videos, games, . . . from a single place.
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