Posts tagged with comprehension.
The power of the podcast
My love of lecture recordings is finally confirmed legitimate by scientists.
The findings of a study reported in the New Scientist last month concluded that students who use podcasted lecture recordings while taking notes score higher on exams than their class-attending peers.
The study, conducted at the State University of New York in Fredonia, compared student scores on an exam that covered the material of a single lecture. Researchers had half the class attend the lecture in person. While the other half was told to download an audio recoding in sync with images of the prof's PowerPoint slides. One week later, students were quizzed on what they'd learned. The results were surprising.
On average, the in-class students scored a mediocre 62% while the podcast students scored a reasonable 71%.
Psychologist Dr. Dani McKinney, who led the study, explains the major benefit of a podcast is the ability to pause, rewind and listen to recordings multiple times. This enables students to contemplate the difficult parts of a lecture. She also adds that the disparity disappears if the podcasters do not take notes.*
Dr. McKinney's study looked at the benefits of a single podcast, for one lecture. At the University of Lethbridge, Dr. Marlo Steed is experimenting with podcasts over an entire semester. Dr. Steed researches the intersects between technology and education. This semester, after always uploading some course components online, he went fully online. His-fourth year seminar on Internet and Education has no class time. Instead, notes are posted to the course website along with video recordings of lectures.
Part of Dr. Steed's motivation stems from a 2001 study at the University of California, Santa Barbara. As he explains, that study showed when video is paired with audio or text, "the potential exists for establishing stronger cognitive connections for memory and comprehension."
Dr. Steed isn't sure yet whether his experiment had success. He won't have all the data until the end of classes in April. But he did collect some tentative data on the percentage of students who were using one of his podcasts. The result? 60%. It seems no matter what service a professor provides, be it office hours or tutorials, about half the class won't use it.
As Dr. Steed notes, podcasting is unlikely to replace the need for classrooms. Yet, combined with engaging material, concise notes and effective study habits, recordings are a powerful tool. In the meantime, students don't have to wait for their profs to upload material to iTunesU. Instead, you can a purchase a $50 recorder and do-it-yourself. Besides, with an hour of class costing around $121, it's nice to have a permanent record of your studies.
1 Based on: $4,750 tuition (books and lodging extra) / divided by 26 weeks of class / divided by 15 hours of class per week = $12.00 per hour.
*Editor: See more tips in the University 101 section of GlobeCampus, under the 'Once you get there' section.
Tagged with
exams,
podcast,
lecture,
notes,
performance,
listen,
studies,
rewind,
memory,
comprehension,
itunes
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