http://michaelseery.com/

This post summarises a mini-review on recent literature on podcasting and learning in the higher education context. Along with the journal article title, a brief annotation is provided. I have previously written about Gilly Salmon’s wonderful book Podcasting for Learning in Universities” which has lots of examples on implementation of podcasting in practice. The purpose of this article is to probe a little deeper and look at the primary research on podcasting. It seems to be an area of research about to explode, and it will be interesting to watch how 2010 develops.

The main findings across the series of papers surveyed below are that podcasts are very beneficial to students who view them as useful revision aids. Their flexibility allows them to review materials at their own pace and as many times as they want. However, good principles in podcast design should be considered, so that it stimulates learning, and is not seen as a passive learning resource to supplement/replace lecture/reading material. It has been found that in the main, students access podcasts in dedicated study time, rather than ‘on the go’.

A review of podcasting in higher education: Its influence on the traditional lecture

O. McGarr, Australasian Journal of Educational Technology, 2009, 25(3), 309-321: a nice review on the impact of podcasting on the traditional lecture. Some studies of students use of podcasts are described. Students tend to access podcasts during designated study time, and view them predominantly as a review/revision tool rather than replacement. Podcast production should be careful not to reinforce passivity and seek to stimulate learners.

What better way to start a mini-review than with a review! In this case, this is a nice paper by a fellow Irishman, Oliver McGarr at the University of Limerick. He identifies three types of podcasts, those which replay the content of a lecture for review and revision (substitutional), those which provide additional material to aid students’ understanding (supplemental) and those which are student created (creative). The paper reviews whether/how the implementation of podcasts in higher education affects the value of the traditional lecture, considering the value of the podcast itself. A nice analogy is drawn between the rise of the podcast with the mass availability of textbooks in the late 1960′s (Fitzgerald, 1968). There are of course advantages to lectures; the lecturer can provide context, personal experience and expertise and enthuse students, although it is argued that in the main, lectures are passive experiences (Black, 2005). The review summarises a range of studies described in the literature. Some interesting findings are:

• that students did not listen to podcasts ‘on the go’, preferring instead to listen to them at a computer during designated study time:  a study of 18/39 respondents, Lee and Chan, 2007; a study of 196 business students, 80% listened on a PC, Evans, 2008, 91% of 209/249 journalism students listened during study time, Huntsberger and Stavitsky, 2007;
• students may use podcasts to replace text reading :40% of the students in the Huntsberger and Stavitsky study, above, used podcasts as a replacement rather than a supplement to textbooks;
• podcasting seen as predominantly for revision and review rather than replacement: 71% of 1074 Australian students used them as a tool for review and revision, Willams and Fardon 2007; 283 students in science(UK), tended (no number given) to use podcasts for review and revision, Copley, 2007. Copley also mentions the download tines, immediately afer lecture and immediately before exams were peak times, with a steady low-level demand in between. A study of 164/246 US students found that podcasts did not affect student attendance, Bongey, Cizadlo and Kalnbach, 2006.

McGarr then addresses the various themes in his review. Regarding the educational use of podcasts, he sounds a warning about reinforcing the passive nature of lectures, by just having podcasts of a recording of the lecture, or podcasts of summaries of materials, as students may just use these summaries rather than summarise themselves! Using podcasts to provide stimulating supplemental materials may be beneficial. The other end of the spectrum is to allow students to create the podcasts themselves (see project at Dublin Institute of Technology on this concept). This clearly moves students from being passive observers to active creators. Additionally, the notion of m-learning in the sense of learning while doing something else seems to be a myth, based on the above research. Students tended to access the materials during designated study time.

iTunes University and the classroom: Can podcasts replace Professors?

D. McKinney, J. L. Dyck, E. S. Luber, Computers & Education , 2009, 52, 617–623: aims to examine how students would do if they missed a lecture and had to make it up by reviewing a podcast. Found that students who reviewed lecture by podcast performed better in a test, although limited conclusions bounded by the scale and scope of the study are drawn from this.

What a great title. I imagine university professors everywhere uncomfortably shifting in their seats wondering what bronze pea moulds have to do with their profession. This is another paper with a similar theme to that covered in McGarr’s review, above. As academics, can we critically identify what our role is if lecture material is available in other sources than just coming to lectures. The paper summarises a study on two groups of psychology students (poor them, they always seem to be the ones who are subjected to these studies!). One group (32 students) was given a 25 minute lecture with Powerpoint handouts and the second group (34 students) was given a podcast with Powerpoint handouts. One week later, both students took a test, and it was found that students in the podcast group performed significantly better than those in the in-lecture group (t(64) = 2.12, p < .05). (A bead of sweat forms on Prof. McNult’s brow…)

A nice aspect of the study though is that the researchers looked at the quality of the notes taken by each set of students and assigned it to four categories: no notes, minimal notes, average notes, extensive notes. While a large number (12/34) of the podcast group took no notes (compared to 0/32 for in-class), 4/34 of the podcast group took extensive notes, compared to 0/32 for the in-class group. The authors attribute this to the fact that the students were not given any instructions on what to do with the podcasts, but that those who wanted to take extensive notes had the opportunities afforded by playback (22/34 students listened to the podcast more than once). The authors conclude from this small scale study that while podcasts may provide alternatives to students who miss class, and the advantages of podcast playback are useful, the purpose of the study was to examine this either/or scenario (either go to lecture or listen to podcast). They acknowledge this was the subject of much debate among their peers. I think important conclusions on how to produce podcasts that could enhance lectures will be a worthwhile next step in this study. (Prof McNult dabbs his forehead as he enters his lecture hall…)

The effectiveness of m-learning in the form of podcast revision lectures in higher education

C. Evans, Computers & Education, 2008, 50, 491–498: An interesting study teasing out the perceived value students place on podcasts in the spectrum of learning materials available. Students value them more than text books but not significantly more than lecture notes for revision. Access found that students viewed these materials in dedicated study time. Some good grounding here for teachers/lecturers considering podcasts for revision materials.

This post was briefly mentioned in the summary of McGarr’s review, above, but I think it is worth teasing out a little more here. The McKinney paper above looked at podcasts and their role in supplementing a lecture, whereas in this work, Evans particularly concentrates on the aspect of using podcasts for review. 200 first level students were given some revision podcasts in the run up to their examination session, after the course had been completed. I think this is an important study, as it strikes me as a very useful application, and is possibly the first step academics might take in developing podcasts, as they may fear that students won’t come to their lectures if they make them available during lecture time. The results throw up some interesting observations. Although over 70% of the students (based on pilot data) owned an iPod or equivalent, 80% listened to the podcasts on PC’s. A significant majority of the students thought that revising the materials via podcast was quicker than revising from notes, and more effective that revising from textbooks, and that they were more receptive to the materials delivered as podcasts than either revision classes or textbooks, although there was no difference on the effectiveness of podcasts for revision over lecture notes. The results again point to observations that despite the flexibility of podcasts, their use while multi-tasking is not observed. The point about students viewing podcasts as more effective than texts but not than notes is interesting, and to me points to a useful direction in offering a multimedia format of revision tools that may be more engaging and stimulating than a textbook.

Podcasting in higher education: What are the implications for teaching and learning?

S. Lonn, S. D. Teasley, Internet and Higher Education, 2009, 12, 88–92: Large scale study examining the usage and perceptions of students and staff for podcasts. Majority of students accessed materials at their PC, and felt that they were useful for revision/review. Some discrepancies between the responses of instructors and students regarding whether teaching practice actually changed as a result of the podcast.

This paper reports a large scale study on university professors and students in the American mid-west (I wonder where?!). Some interesting findings in the context of the work quoted above are reported. Regarding access, 76% of (879) students said that they accessed the materials on laptop/PC. Their reasons for downloading were to review material after attending class (63%), to make up for a missed class (22), or because they were interested in supplemental material (7%).  While instructors uploaded materials weekly, students tended to download less often, and usually just before quizzes or exams. An interesting point is made regarding the access methods, and that as mobile phone usage to access internet becomes more common place, these devices may be more significant players for students accessing educational materials – at the moment though students predominantly accessed via their PC. The point about what podcasts are actually for is brought up again. Instructors felt that their teaching style had improved because of the podcasts, but students did not. Only one of the 22 instructors said their teaching practice had changed. This really is a crucial issue, and again as academics we have to ask why we are doing podcasts if it is not going to enhance our module delivery? The authors conclude on an optimistic note in this regard; that podcasts may present fundamental topics to allow for more in-class discussion and other innovative teaching methods.

Creative use of podcasting in higher education and its effect on competitive agency

M. Lazzari, Computers & Education, 2009, 52, 27–34: This paper examines the use of podcasts with part-time an full time students in an Italian university. While significant improvements in the performance of part-time students were not observed, there were some improvements in exam results for full time students. Of interest here, some creative ideas for student-driven podcast creation are outlined.

I must confess to being a little confused by the title, but this paper clearly outlines the use of incorporating podcasting into teaching and examines any affect on student learning. I include it also because I think it has been misinterpreted in other literature, often cited as an example of work that demonstrates where podcasting that did not have an effect. While conclusions of the work show that the podcasting implementation did not improve performance of the student group as a whole, the author goes to some lengths to explain some confounding factors that may be attributed to lack of perceived benefit to part time students in the study, centred on a lack of awareness on their part.

A nice aspect of the work is the suggestion of how the podcasts were integrated into teaching. Here is a fine example of teaching methods that really changed with the implementation of podcasts. Students were required to complete a three stage creation of podcasts, involving audio editing to match lecturer questions and provided answers, audio recording tp give their own answers to lecturer questions and creation of knew knowledge to provide summaries of materials not yet covered.

In terms of relative merit of podcasts, textbooks and lecture notes, podcasts and notes were considered more useful in reviewing, whereas textbooks more useful in studying a subject, presumably for the first time. A conclusion regarding the relative merits for revision is vague, as the definition of revision may have confused students – in any case a good point is made about the limited use of a large audio file in final stage revision, where short notes would be favoured.

Quoted references cited by McGarr in his review quoted here are listed here for information:

• Black, L. (2005). Dialogue in the lecture hall: Teacher-student communication and students’ perceptions of their learning. Qualitative Research Reports in Communication, 6(1), 31-40.
• Bongey S., Cizadlo, G. & Kalnbach, L. (2006). Explorations in course-casting: Podcasts in higher education. Campus-Wide Information Systems, 23(5), 350-367.
• Copley, J. (2007). Audio and video podcasts of lectures for campus-based students: Production and evaluation of student use. Innovations in Education and Teaching International, 44(4), 387-399.
• Evans, C. (2008). The effectiveness of m-learning in the form of podcast revision lectures in higher education. Computers & Education, 50, 491-498.
• Fitzgerald, P. (1968). The lecture: An Arts view. In D. Layton (Ed.), University teaching in transition (pp. 11-17). UK: Robert Cunningham and Sons
• Huntsberger, M. & Stavitsky, A. (2006). The new “podagogy”: Incorporating podcasting into journalism education. Journalism and Mass Communication Educator, 61(4), 397-410.
• Lee, M. & Chan, A. (2007). Pervasive, lifestyle-integrated mobile learning for distance learners: An analysis and unexpected results from a podcasting study. Open Learning: The Journal of Open and Distance Learning, 22(3), 201-218

Since coming across Articulate a few months ago, I’ve made quite a few presentations and loaded them onto our VLE. But a new project on developing open access resources meant that I needed to host the videos myself. This entry explains how I took my Articulate presentation and loaded it up onto a site I set up. In particular (it took me two days to do what should have been a 5 minute job!), I highlight the pitfalls I came across and how I got around them.

The good news is that once you have everything set up, it should take less than five minutes from publishing Articulate to being live online.

Website Hosting

Outcomes of Website hosting section:

You will have WordPress installed on your site
You will have a redirect ready to set up so that domain.com will redirect to domain.com/wordpress
You will have your site FTP details

I love WordPress and have recently started using WordPress.org to mange a website. My service provider, Blacknight, facilitates automatic installation of WordPress, so I can avoid WordPress’ scary-looking “Famous Five Minute Install”. I installed automatically, and selected a theme, and hey presto, my new site was live. Some issues:

Issue 1:

My website was “http://www.domain.com/” When WordPress is installed, it chooses a URL like “www.domain.com/wordpress”. But I’m greedy and I wanted my WordPress site to come up when I typed just the domain name, without the WordPress. I’ve done this before with another site, just changed the URL in the service provider control panel to “/”. This works, but boy it causes problems!!

The main problem is that this is fine if you are just going to be using the very nice WordPress site admin to upload pictures, etc. But because Articulate presentations involve lots of files and folders, you need to upload them all to the domain server and then link to them from your WordPress site admin page editing. Changing the url to “/” to match with the domain name causes lots of problems. This is a lesson I have learned and will never forget.

• Keep the URL as “http://www.domain.com/wordpress” or whatever you want the “wordpress” bit to be.
• To make a redirect to upload later, open Notepad and type in the following (replacing “wordpress” with whatever you decide, then save as “index.php” on your desktop (“index.php” may be different on your host – see below).

<?php header(
'Location: http://www.domain.com/wordpress' ) ;
?>

• Below, we are going to upload this index.php file to the server, and this will redirect domain.com to domain.com/wordpress

Issue 2:

To move the articulate files from your computer to the host server, you need to ftp them. To do this, you need to get the ftp address. In Blacknight, this is in the Webspace > Website configuration. Note the FTP address (something like 12.34.456.78), the log in and password.

My problem here was that I host two websites on my domain hosting package, and the Webspace was set to the other site. Therefore I was moving files onto my server, putting in what I thought was the correct address in my web browser and getting “File not found”. I hate File not found”!! 22 emails between me and Blacknight later, it turned out that I was uploading files to the wrong webspace. This won’t be a problem if you just have one domain on your server host, but if not, check that you have the right webspace selected. In Blacknight user cp, this is found in Webspace > Webspaces (oh it’s SOOO easy when you know how!!). Get the FTP address as described above and the login and password.

Articulate Presentation

Outcomes of Articulate Presentation section:

You will have your articulate presentation (Web output) published
You will learn the wise ways and use .swf and not .flv

Make your articulate presentation. Publish it for Web delivery. It’s that easy!

In mine, I had embedded videos in my presentation which I made in Camtasia Studio. Because I wanted to upload these to Youtube at a later date, I published them as .flv files. But when I got to the end and put everything on my website, it turned out the my service provider didn’t like .fly (something to do with MIME error, don’t know and don’t care), so I reproduced my videos as .swf format (using very handy batch publish on Camtasia) and republished my Ariculate with these.

David Masterson (Twitter = @elearning), a very helpful Articulatually knowledgable person, pointed me to a nice workaround if you were stuck with .flv files. This is to upload them to Youtube and embed web object: you embed a link “www.youtube.com/v/xyz” where “xyz” is the Youtube video extension, the bit that comes after the “watch?v=” in a Youtube URL- see presentation below for details. This works nicely, although does assume that you are willing/able to upload any and all videos to Youtube. I could have also inserted a web object and linked to hosted .swf files on the server.

Add Articulate Presentation to Your Web Host and Go!

Outcomes of this section:

Set up redirect page
Upload your content to the website
Link through your WP Admin Page Editor

The last thing to do is to upload your redirect page (just have to do this once) and your Articulate presentation. I used Cuteftp, which has a 30 day trial. The Articulate FTP option that comes up at the end of publishing didn’t work for me, maybe I made an error. I used the connection wizard in Cuteftp and entered in the details for my site (remembering the point about webspaces above). Once this comes up, you use it like Windows explorer.

To test out your FTP prowess, remember the index.php file you saved earlier? In the left hand pane of cute ftp, navigate to your desktop. in the right hand pane navigate to your root folder, so you are in your domain window. You will see an index file here – this is index.php for my domain host, it might be different for yours (e.g. index.html) – whatever it is this is what you should save your Notepad file, above, as. Drag and drop the index.php file from your desktop to the server domain.

The CuteFTP window, I have navigated to my root folder of my domain to find my index.php file

You can test if this works by typing in your URL: www.domain.com – it should redirect immediately to www.domain.com/wordpress, or whatever you set the URL redirect to be in the code above. If it doesn’t you need to retrace your steps. Check very carefully that you have this index file in the root folder of your host server.

Once you have confirmed you are in the correct folder, you are on the home straight:

• Navigate in the left hand window of cuteftp to where you have your articulate projects saved. Click and drag on the folder you want to copy across (the one that contains the player.html and all the other files) and drag it to the domain window on the right hand side of cute ftp – or copy and paste if you prefer. (You can make a sub-folder if you like to be organised).
• Navigate to the folder and note down the path to the file player.html. In my case below, it would be: www.mathsforchemistry.info/DMCsimultaneousequations/player.html – this is the link you will be embedding into WordPress.

Picture of Cuteftp where I have navigated to the file on my host server I want to link in WordPress

You can now leave the world of ftp behind and move into your WP-admin, by logging into that. (Usually http://domain.com/wordpress/wp-login.php). Create a new post (or page) and put in your jargon. Now you want to insert the link. In my page, I screenshot a page from my presentation (using PixClip) and made that the link. Publish and bask in the reflective glory of your new articulate online presentation!!

One final little trick:

When I had done all this, it looks great. The only issue is that the webpage or tab title is that of the articulate presentation. If you called it something sensible, then this is OK, but it is possible to change it to whatever you want:

• Find the player.html file in the my articulate projects folder of whatever presentation you are looking at,
• Right-click on player.html and open with Notepad.
• Scroll down a few lines – you will see “<Title> gobbledygook </Title>”
• Delete the Gobbledygook and put in whatever you want there. In mine I entered:

<TITLE>
Simultaneous Equations for Chemical Analysis | Dr Michael Seery
</TITLE>

• Save this and upload just this player file to the folder with this articulate project using cuteftp.

You can see the results of all my labours at my website – click on the image!

Future Plans

Looking at things to make the loading of the presentation snazzier – an embedded presentation which expands on clicking. Watch this space!

Discussion boards architecture

Discussion boards are a useful locus for interaction between peers and between tutor and learners. In my role as tutor, I feel I have used them well in terms of providing students with support, and allowing them freedom to interact with each other in discussion materials. this is mindful of work by people like Angeli and Kanuka, who have written some nice critical overviews of academics’ uses of discussion boards with their students. Angeli talks about “levels” of interaction on the part of tutor – from very basic (confirmations or acknowledgement) to advanced (getting students to tease out their understanding). Kanuka reports on a large scale survey of use of discussion boards in the US, reporting that their potential is underused.

As a student on the MSc (Elearning) course, the discussion board is a useful portal to keep in touch with peers as I am out of class for the first five weeks. I am involved in two module boards – a general course one and a specific one on academic writing, where we are expected to develop group responses to academic articles. In the former case, the board started off with a rush – lots of useful exchange of ideas. This died off after a week, and I am wondering why (apart from the obvious factor that nobody had any more to say!)

One element may be the architecture of the board itself, and it worth considering how this may be optimised. The arrangement is similar to one I use myself – different discussion topics for different sections of the course. As a tutor, this makes perfect sense; discussion posts relevant to particular topics are in appropriate sections. The problem I find as a student is that when logging into the VLE, new posts are displayed. One can read these as a group (i.e. not specific to section topics), but it is not possible flag them. So if there is no time to post a response at that point, it is difficult to remember (or indeed find) the post at a later stage when there is time to reply. The VLE (webcourses (a WebCT-Blackboard hybrid) is primarily to blame in this instance I think – as the discussion board options (flagging, subscribing to threads, email alerts, etc) are very limited compared to standard open discussion fora. The point about ease of finding posts is relevant, as according to Salmon (2000), many posts are composed off-line – i.e. people wish to give consideration to what they write. This is especially important where students are expected to back up what they say with literature, which may take off-line time.

MacDonald discusses forums, wikis and blogs as means of asynchronous supports MacDonald, 2008, Ch 6). While outlining the usual ideas of facilitating group interaction by means of activities, using assessment etc, I don’t see anything on good practice regarding the architecture of the board itself. (There is an interesting statistic that 1/5 of a group will be active contributors, which I think bears out in my experience).

Group Work via discussion boards

A second consideration is how well discussion boards support group work. As part of a module on writing and disseminating research, where group responses are required on academic papers, I have found it a poor substitute to a wiki. The problem with using a discussion board is that while it allows individual students to post their thoughts, which are often very insightful for others to read, the process of the group is not facilitated, as the editing and compiling of individual responses is done off line, by one or more nominated members of the group. In addition, because of the many statements into one approach of discussion board group work, various members may take different strategies to what they believe the final product should be (e.g. visual rather than text) and then be disappointed if their ideas were not included in the final distillation. A wiki allows all members of the group equal hierarchy, as all members can edit. (MacDonald (2008) does report that their are issues around members being reluctant to edit other’s work, which is something I have heard about at a recent Edtech conference too.) The democracy of a wiki (which is inherent with problems of course!) is a strength in the regard of ensuring everyone has equal contribution. So there it is – discussion boards are anti-democratic!

As a tutor, I have not used discussion boards to support group work, only for peer-peer support and posting of individual work, so I can’t comment on my perspective in that regard.

References

Angeli, C., Valanides, N. and Bonk, C.J. (2003) Communication in a web-based conferencing system: the quality of computer-mediated interactions, British Journal of Educational Technology, 34(1), 31 – 43

Kanuka, H. (2005) An exploration into facilitating higher levels of learning in a text-based internet learning environment using diverse instructional strategies, Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 10(3), article 8.

MacDonald, J. (2008) Blended Learning and Online Tutoring, Gower: Aldershot.

Salmon, G. (2000) E-moderating: The key to teaching and learning online, Routledge Falmer: London.

1. Information about resources – it’s a great way to get information about various new media/resources. For example, I have found out about presentation tools @prezi microblogging sites Tumblr, slidesharing site slideshare.net, Eraser for wiping my PC nice and clean, some sort of I-Tunes for research articles Mendeley and a nice application called Readability for making your screen look like it is back in the 19th century.

2. Access to Experts – some very informative people in the field are using Twitter. I have found out lots of interesting things in the area of technology from @mweller, @jamesclay, Galway’s @sharonlflynn and the human form of Tech-google @raduboncea as well as institutional feeds like @timeshighered, @JISC and @EDUCAUSEreview (name’s too long guys!) I want to be able to understand what @psychemedia talks about but only do some of the time (I’m not a geek yet ) I have just started following @eric_mazur who does great stuff with peer teaching in physics. At it’s most basic, it’s convenient RSS feed for things like news feeds @guardiantech. I’ve also got fast feedback from @Techsmith regarding camtasia.

3. Access to peers – much more convenient tool that email, I can access my peers on a course I am doing easily, and it feels more personal than email. In fact I get the same excitement using twitter as I did accessing email via Vax all those years ago

4. I also get access to important people, like my course tutor @muir31 so I can sort out any queries quickly or she can disseminate interesting stuff just-in-time or as she comes across it.

5. There is very little uninteresting stuff – which I think is people’s main concern about Twitter – ok occasionally someone wants to tell me they are brushing their teeth or scratching their heel, but it is drowned out with interesting stuff.

6. When I first came across twitter, I was amazed that people were sitting in a conference being extremely rude with laptops in front of them. But knowing now what goes on behind the scenes, I can see it is a very useful added dimension to conference networking and discussion.

7. And lastly, it’s not all one way – I hope I can give something back! @michaelkls

Overview

The first thing that strikes me is that it is a grounded paper, about obtaining data from practice. The authors are upfront about what the gap in the knowledge is, and how they intend to investigate it. The knowledge gap is the lack of data on how academics write and approach writing, especially for publication. The means by which the data is gathered is through a series of “hard” and “soft” approaches. I found the paper very encouraging to read, almost inspiring!

Research Approach

The theoretical framework isn’t explicitly stated, but from the approach shown it can be considered constructivist and perhaps social constructivist. Participants on the programme were encouraged to build on their knowledge in a step-wise manner, and interact with peers to give and provide feedback, as well as “pressure” to have the job done when required. Each individual had their own targets, dependent on their own backgrounds, prior knowledge and interests. The research question was to evaluate the impact of the Writing for Publication programme, using a variety of methods – empirical data such as publication outputs and qualitative data such as focus groups and monitoring forms.

Findings

The, perhaps, surprsising and main finding of the programme was that it was generally successful. The paper is clear about two types of writing – binge and piecemeal. The former is based on the idea that writing a paper (for example) is a big amount of work so a big amount of time needs to be set aside to do it. However, given how busy we academics are, it never gets done. The latter involves “stealing” short bursts of time used towards constructing the overall piece of work. Some participants said that they stole time while waiting for kids, before be or in the morning at the library. As well as this, the impact of meeting colleagues regularly meant that there was some peer pressure to have something done and provided a useful feedback.

Impression

For me, academic writing (on a regular basis) is like time management – you’re just supposed to know how to do it. Boice is quoted in this article that it isn’t just that more time is required, but support and development should be provided to staff. In my own experience, I was certainly in the binge category, although I have recently started blogging on my own professional specialism (photochemistry.wordpress.com) which involves creating short articles over the course of a few days and posting, rather than one big amount of text all at once. The process is both more enjoyable and more fruitful. However, I am a successful binger and the reason is that this approach gives you lots of time to get settled, consider your thoughts and write and think. The piecemeal approach would require much higher organisation so that one could pick up seamlessly. One advantage of the piecemeal approach which I don’t think was mentioned is that it provides more opportunity to really critically reread work, something I am less inclined to do if it is a bigger piece.

Something I would like to discuss with my group is the the concept of confidence in writing. We are all experts in our discipline, no doubt, but why then do people not write more. This is especially becoming more pertinent in the digital age – I think people like Martin Weller have convincingly argued that we will all as academics have a digital identity in the coming years which will identify us as academics, so perhaps that need to develop writing is becoming more urgent.

Gilly Salmon and Palitha Edirisingha (eds), SRHE/OU Press 2008, reprinted 2009.

I really liked this book, or at least the parts that I read. As with anything by Gilly Salmon (or Gill e-Salmon as I like to write her), it is pragmatic for the practitioner but based in research, without the research being shoved down your throat. She writes the kind of stuff you could give to a colleague who doesn’t care about how their epistemology affects their approach to teaching, so to speak.

Image taken from IMPALA website (http://www.le.ac.uk/impala/)

The book is slightly strangely organised. I read it in the order Chapter 1, 15, 2, 4, 3, 5, 6 then glanced through other chapters. Chapter 15 is very useful. The chapters 4 – 14 are reports from lecturers who have implemented podcasting into their practice.

Chapter 1 overviews the book, and is very jolly, as well as being quite inspirational – you can do it! I was a little surprised at the emphasis placed here (and throughout) on audio alone podcasts – do they really work? I’m not sure I could listen to a detailed lecture just on audio. Nevertheless, chapter 4 looked at using such audio podcasts to provide students with pre-knowledge before lectures in introductory physics – in an attempt to iron out those dratted misconceptions. There was some evaluation, which looked a little shaky, but the description o fthe impementation is useful.

Chapter 5 wsa interesting to me, as it detailed the use of podcasts to teach software, something I have spent a lot of time developing over the last few years. The chapter described the irony in the proliferation of paper based materials/books on teaching an essentially dynamic topic; and showed how screen videos could be useful in teaching software to students. Again, the evaluation didn’t show great “enhancement” or whatever, but from my own experience, students support and feedback are as crucial as the notes/videos etc. Again, the chapter was practical wth tips and advice.

The chapters detailed experiences in a range of disciplines including physics (ch 4); GIS (ch 5 – 7); engineering (ch 8); law (ch 9); veterinary med (ch 10) as well as a range of scenarios: on-campus students, distance students, audio, video, feedback, student podcasts.

However, it is Chapter 15 that gets the tradtitional e-Salmon stamp. Here, a clear ten point plan is spelled out, based on the details and experiences discussed in the previous chapters. Number 1, and perhaps often ignored, is the rationale. I thikn Salmon has said elsewhere – does the online environment have added value? If so, use it, if not consider why not and don’t use if so. Then comes practical issues such as the medium, their role (eg in a blended module), the structure, contributors and content, their reusability**, length, framework and access method.

**It was with horror in year 2 of implementing web-videos that I realised I had given specific dates for submission of assignments in the first year in the audio and video, I had to re-record the podcasts again to make them “timeless”

I really recommend this book if you are interested in podcasting, there is a companion book on the mechanics of podcasting, the three copies of which have mysteriously disappeared from our library. There is an associated website http://www.le.ac.uk/impala/

It has inspired me to think about how podcasts might be useful to support my lectures, so that in itself is a good indication of its usefulness.

Integrating an online component into year 1 lecture notes

I really like this idea of giving students some work to do before a lecture, and using that as a basis for what is covered in the lecture. The approach will be to develop podcasts that precede every lecture (or two lectures as I will be lecturing the group twice per week), these may integrate SCORM and hence tie in with continuous assessment. It might be feasible to include in-class clicker questions at the start of the lecture to get a feel for what students gained from the podcasts.

Gilly Salmon has a great book that I am reading – called Podcasting for Learning in Universities, published in Aug 2008 (OU/SRHE). In it there is a chapter on giving Physics undergrads a podcast prior to lectures to thrash out some of the basic concepts. I have to admit I was surprised that these researchers only used audio (I would have thought visual was very necessary), but the authors claimed a very slight advantage on using podcasts (surely would have been bigger if they had used imagery as well). I think the integration with SCORM would be useful in attributing importance to the podcasts.I’d hope to develop some visual materials to go with these although initial time constraints (still no new laptop ) means that I might initially have to nick some text book animations or pictures.

Development of Support Materials for Advanced Classes

At a recent conference I met Peter Mahaffy, a man behind the wonderful materials atwww.kcvs.ca, who gave a really inspirational talk on visualisation materials. To this end I would like to develop some materials for one of my advanced modules – photochemistry. A few reasons – firstly, I love teaching this module, and developing material for it would be fun! Secondly, the module is conceptually difficult, and visualisation materials may help with some concepts. Finally, there is no decent textbook for a general photochemistry course. There are lots of good specific ones, but nothing that covers a bit of everything. To that end, I have a ‘dream’ of a decent online photochemistry text (will be developed atphotochemistry.pbworks.com) – medium to longer term plan is to encourage some heavy hitters in the area to send me some material on the basis that it will be open access. 

Lab Support

Time-wise, it’s probably not going to happen in the next year, but I would like to develop lab support materials that integrate pre-practical and post-practical activities. 

So that’s the work plan – now just have to do it. These will be based on best principles for pedagogy that I am gathering together, and that I have tried to summarise my understanding of (in process at the moment – will link here). The other work plan is to finally write my paper on my online module that I’ve run for the last few years; again a nice chapter in Salmon’s book (above) has given me ideas on how I might structure that.

1. 50 ways to use twitter in the classroom

2. Twitter in the Classroom:

3. General overview about Twitter in Education

More as I come across them

Resource

“Factors that influence pupil engagement with science simulations: the role of distraction, vividness, logic, instruction and prior knowledge” in Chemistry Education Research and Practice, 2007, (8), 1-12 [Open Access]

Overview

Very nice paper on students’ interactions with simulations, and the barriers and difficulties they encountered. Very interesting section on students using a simulation – the simulation had a nice mock-up of a chemical task (titration). None of the school students were able to complete it, although looking at it, it seemed intuitive. Through interviews, the researchers found that the students (school students) were attracted to colours initially (don’t press the red button!) and that the instructions, placed alongside where the action was to be taken, and numbered, confused the students as they didn’t notice the numbering, and to them the instructions just looked random. Paper asks deeper questions about role of these simulations – are they checking students’ IT skills or are they testing the content. Lots of food for thought in terms of designing own resources. Simulations are available on Iowa State University (example studied is redox) and you will need Shockwave to play them.

Screenshot from University of Iowa State Chemistry Education Research Group Simulations and Animations page

Lessons

• Keep interface as simple as possible concentrating on what you want to assess/teach (not see if they are adept at technology);
• Bright colours attract, even though they might be required later in the  sequence;
• Students may not necessarily read the instructions, and instructions should be linear.