A qualitative study on the effect of podcasting strategies (studycasts) to support 7th grade student motivation and learning outcomes

Abstract

The purpose of this qualitative case study was to understand how a middle school teacher uses a studycast activity—podcasts designed to support test review—to stimulate student motivation and engagement with class content and to affect student academic performance. The teacher and two students participated in interviews with the researcher. Classroom observations were made of all students for each class period over the course of two weeks, 15.5 hours per week. The first week was scheduled at the start of a unit on Africa and allowed the researcher to observe students before they interacted with technology. The second week of observation occurred as students worked in teams to create their own studycasts. The teacher explained performance criteria and provided ongoing scaffolding throughout the study period. Three themes emerged from the data analysis. The first theme was practicality. The teacher perceived that his students were not spending enough time reviewing for tests largely because they could not, or would not, attend after school study sessions. The second theme, storytelling describes this teacher’s unique way of using studycasts in his classroom. Students created stories that incorporated class content, recording these as studycasts and making these available to their classmates and others via an RSS feed on a classroom website. The final theme, motivation, describes the teacher’s and students’ perceptions of the benefits of studycasts in classroom learning.