Teaching & Learning

What is a Podcast?

By setting up an RSS feed (Really Simple Syndication), you can subscribe to a variety of topics to automatically receive new podcasts placed on the Internet. There are free podcasting websites (e.g. ipodder.org or iTunes) if you want to create a subscription service.

Watch the 3-minute explanatory video Podcasting in Plain English.

Podcasting in Teaching and Learning

Podcasts are used for a variety of different learning and teaching activities. The beauty of a podcast is that students can listen/watch the podcast wherever they are, when they want.

Some of the most relevant uses for UTAS teaching staff are:

•    Distributing learning materials that are suitable for different learning types (materials can include sound, images and video)
•    Distributing lectures, interviews, guest speakers, and/or field trip materials
•    Lecturer providing feedback on assignments or discussing assessment details
•    Student generated material - audio streams, student journalism, reflections
•    Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ’s), audio glossary, sound bytes

Examples of use

Some examples of a podcast can be found at the Academic Skills and Learning Centre of Australian National University.

iTunes U has lots of examples (from Australia and across the world) of University podcasts. MIT and Stanford both have large podcast libraries in iTunes U. There are also a number of Australian Universities involved.

There are 2 ways that you can include podcasts in a unit. You can link to an already available podcast using a MyLO web link or you can create your own, save it on Lectopia and make it available via a Lectopia link in MyLO.

There are lots of available podcasts on the web. To find an appropriate podcast it is often easier to use a podcast directory (search engine for podcasts) such as: Podcast Alley or iTunes. 

Create audio Podcasts for use at UTAS

Creating podcasts, particularly those that are audio-only, is a relatively simple process involving hardware such as a good quality microphone (preferably not your computers inbuilt microphone) and recording software that can either be purchased or downloaded as freeware.  Echo 360 is a free software package available at the University that can be used to create audio or screen podcasts (see Lectopia page for more information about Echo 360.

If you want to create your own podcast for a unit the simplest way to begin is to use Lectopia (or Lectopia desktop - Echo 360) to create your audio/video files. After you create the audio/video file you can upload these to Lectopia and then link to these files in MyLO.

Who to contact at UTAS

If you want more information about podcasting at the University of Tasmania contact CALT.

Articles about the educational benefits of podcasting

7 things you should know about podcasts (PDF) is an Educause learning initiative.

There’s Something in the Air: Podcasting in Education article by Gardner Campbell (Assistant Vice President for Teaching and Learning Technologies and Professor of English at the University of Mary Washington) on the use of Podcasting.

Futurelab has published The Power of the Podcast.

A large collection of articles and other resources relating to podcasting (articles, examples, etc) and education can be found at Shambles.net

There is an interesting screencast (a podcast with pictures captured from a computer screen) produced by Allan Carrington at the University of Adelaide - From Podcasting to Learncasting.

UTAS ITR – Research on using recordings in University settings.