Abstract
Podcasting is now being used frequently in the higher education sector. Although research has been conducted into the use of podcasting in teaching business, engineering, sciences and languages, little has been done on its use in arts learning. This paper reports on a study that investigated the effectiveness of using podcasts to learn music and visual arts in a teacher-education institution. A total of 128 Year-One to Year-Four students completed a survey and 24 students attended focus-group interviews and gave their feedback on the effectiveness of using podcasts in learning. Generally speaking, the students found the podcasts useful and viewed podcasting as a method which could be used to supplement faceto- face teaching. Results of the study indicated that demonstration of procedures or skills was the most effective type of podcast while reproduction of lecture materials was the least effective. The students suggested that the teachers needed to increase the relevance of the podcast content to what was taught during lessons. The paper concludes with a discussion of the production of effective podcasts and directions for future studies.Keywords: podcasting; podcasts; teaching/learning strategy; arts education; teacher education(Published: 3 January 2012)Citation: Research in Learning Technology 2012, 20: 14919 - DOI: 10.3402/rlt.v20i0/14919
Highlights
This paper reports on a study that investigated the effectiveness of customised educational materials in the form of podcast files created by teachers
Previous studies have noted that the reproduction of lectures may lead to benefits (Brittain et al 2006) such as providing the lecture for those who did not attend and a record to support revision (Evans 2008), the students who took part in the current study suggested that the reproduction of a lecture in the form of a podcast is not useful
They perceived podcasting as a platform that provided supplementary learning materials to support face-to-face teaching
Summary
This paper reports on a study that investigated the effectiveness of customised educational materials in the form of podcast files created by teachers. These files included video presentations, demonstrations and edited lectures teaching particular aspects of the music and visual arts courses offered by the Hong Kong Institute of Education in the academic year 2009Á2010. The term ‘podcasting’ was first proposed by journalist Ben Hammersley in a February 2004 article of The Guardian (Copley 2007). It is a portmanteau word blending ‘iPod’ and ‘broadcast’ (Sutton-Brady et al 2009). Users may subscribe to a feed that links automatically to the most
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