How can an institution podcast - without reinforcing old teaching?

Via Will comes new that Kansas State Uni will podcast over 6000 of its classes over the coming year. He thinks it is a sign of things to come. I hope that the things to come are better than this.

Now, I love being first, best and biggest - it has a time and place - but quality is what drives education higher and forwards. While the integrity of the lectures and podcasts themselves might not fall into question I am beginning to think that 6000 podcasts is a lot of chalk and talk teaching.

What woud be even better would be to see a community approach to podcasting taking place - seeing what the students have to say about their lectures and letting them feed into the lectures and seminars in 'real time'. We could make real interactive programmes, with interludes and reflection, instead of just renditions of the lectures.

This is the kind of approach we hope to take on the LTS podcast series. We want teachers' views on the policies, advice and examples of practice that are pushed out from the corridors of the Glasgow and Dundee offices, as well as "higher, better" examples of teaching and learning from around the world. SETT Podcasts will no longer - hopefully - just be the lecture itself, but also the comments of participants afterwards or they'll come along with interviews with the speakers. I am hoping that LTS will accept the challenge wholeheartedly, responding to negative or mitigated comments as well as the positive ones. In my experience, though, universities are notoriously bad at this. Also, making these kind of programmes instead of just chucking up content takes a whole lot longer - you couldn't do it 6000 times in a year, even with Wes at the helm ;-)

I wonder how Kansas State Uni will stand to the feedback...

Comments

[chris]

I agree. Just another way of publishing your notes - like lecturers who stand and dictate their latest oeuvre to the class. Maybe they don't do that any more ..... but they did!

[TechnoTeach]

It appears technology will either be used innovatively or as a means to reduce workload and contact time. Now I am all for ways to reduce workload but not at the expense of the learners. Podcasting can be a wonderful means of communication which is a two way process. However, many see it as a secretarial dictaphone where it is much quicker to speak into a microphone than explain in the typed format. Are we addressing all learning styles here? I agree with you Ewan that podcasting should be more than a replication of notes but a communicative tool with a two way process.