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Staying current with podcasts Jim Plummer

Introduction

My name is Jim Plummer, I’m a lecturer in Environment, Conservation and Horticulture at the Urbray Campus of TAFE SA, in South Australia. I actually belong to the regional Institute, so even though our campus is actually located in the city and we share that campus with an agricultural High School, we actually belong to the regional Institute just for grouping.

I tend to mainly teach in areas of soil and Water Management, Irrigation, Environmental Management and Environmental Chemistry, Geographical Information Systems and IT.

Now our students are an interesting group, a few years ago they were mainly mature-aged, part-time students. Over the last couple of years, most of our students would now be straight from school but we have a broad smattering going right, straight from school leavers through to mature-aged, part-time students. The fact that we have more students now straight from school lead me into podcasting in the first place. I was trying to engage them a little bit more and they were used to certain types of things from different sorts of media sources – and podcasting came up as one of those things that could be useful. Most of my students weren’t listening to podcasts beforehand. A few, we’re probably looking at less than 10% of them, were listening to the types of programs that I’d been putting information out of and that will I think be primarily a time-based thing. So they didn’t know much about podcasting beforehand or podcasts and they weren’t really listening to those sorts of things that I ended up starting to provide to them.

So in terms of the context for students listening to podcasts I actually found – I did a survey with a small group of students (about 40 odd students, a couple of different programs) and it came up that where they would listen to podcasts was actually in the car, as they were driving to and from the campus to do their studies. That was by far the big issue for them and to a lesser extent, they would listen to it in the bath, when they were doing housework and even lying on the beach. So that time-shifting component of

© Commonwealth of Australia 2008 1 podcasts is absolutely essential. What’s also essential is that they could do other things whilst they were listening to it. And that’s one of the things that, video forms of podcast for example, can’t actually do because they demand that attention and when you’re listening to something on a computer for example, that tends to demand that attention a bit as well. So as they were moving about, as they were mobile, was the most effective form of using the podcasts. Now most of our students, the vast majority of our students, have MP3 players. If they don’t have a dedicated one then they will probably have it in their phone – we find students tend to keep their mobile phones up to date. When I first started only about 60% of them had access to some form of audio file player although a number of them didn’t realise they actually had an MP3 player built into their mobile phone. The ability to play MP3 files or that format is almost at saturation level now amongst our students. So initially we started off with CDs and found they could be used in cars, now they probably don’t have to rely on CDs quite so much although there are still a few who would actually do that.

Creating relevant and effective podcasts

I felt fairly comfortable with the technology before I started podcasting although you realise there are several things you need to pull together and part of the battle is trying to make sure that the technology you have around you, like the infrastructure, the networks that you use, whether or not they should work, whether they’re actually going to be up to using podcasting. I was reasonably comfortable with the technology to start with, certainly using computers, and I could also record audio, in fact I was using my own equipment and still do. I was able to edit that material using software packages as well. So I felt reasonably comfortable with all that but it does take a long time and particularly when you first start doing it, the learning curve is particularly steep. I was trying to do it on a PC, if you’re running a Mac things are somewhat easier because a lot of these things come built in. One of the problems I faced was that I went away for a break, came back and found that staff had been blocked from downloading MP3 files because someone higher up had thought admin-type staff don’t need access to these particular things – even though the students were still able to access them.

It also, from a technological point of view, presented a problem in the sense that we were never able to get podcasts up online and get RSS feeds working properly as well, that was

© Commonwealth of Australia 2008 2 just technically beyond us. Although another part of TAFE in South Australia has been able to overcome that just recently, so we’ve started to use that. Part of the issue is being able to get around those sort of things, so in the end I was distributing materials to our students as MP3 files, behind a firewall, so on our intranet and also in the form of CDs and other forms of various storage. Mostly our students actually prefer the CDs. So one of the things I found with podcasting and any form of using media like this is you do have to be flexible because there will probably be problems that you come across, particularly infrastructure problems and you need to be a bit creative to get around those. That’s a case of you talking with your IT people and also your student group and then looking at the proficiencies you have for developing materials and trying to come up with a reasonable compromise. And that keeps changing all the time, what you find might work a few months ago may not suddenly work now.

The first step in producing a podcast is finding out what the need is from a student group and then finding out whether there is information available to fill that need. Then what sort of form of podcast might be most effective – be it little snippets of something to provoke some comments and thoughts or whether it should be a bigger interview with an expert, for example, they’re the two common ones. So you have to have a need to start with. There’s no point in trying to produce a podcast about something if you could do it better some other way or it’s easier to fit in.

Generally there’s a bit of effort in producing a podcast so you have to make sure it’s actually worth that effort and the students are going to get something from it. So if you can cover what you need to from an educational point of view in another way then do it. Use a podcast when a podcast really is the most effect way or perhaps the only way you might be able to cover something.

I download podcasts from programs that I think are going to be relevant and I listen to those programs whenever I can – and that actually takes a huge amount of time. I’m actually trying to use podcasting myself and a time-shifting format so I’m listening to them as I’m driving, as I’m walking, all those sort of things, and that’s probably the biggest time component. Then I work out there’s a little snippet of something, it might be just a couple of minutes long, it might be up to eight minutes or ten minutes long that might be relevant.

© Commonwealth of Australia 2008 3 I will download the podcast and then I will use software to take out the bits that I actually want. So the software that I use is either Audacity or (I) have some other audio software that most people probably wouldn’t have, it’s a bit more expensive, which is sort of music based that can do that as well. Audacity is probably the easiest-to-use program with a less steep learning curve than most of the other audio packages if you’re using PC. If you’re using a Mac then the tools come built in and Garage Band is one of those tools that you can use. If you’re using a Mac it just makes podcasting so much easier.

When I first started I was editing out the bit of audio that I wanted and then I was actually recording a front end to that. So in other words, I’d say, this is what this audio is about, these are the sort of things I want you to reflect upon and respond in this particular way. That gets to be a bit of a drag because you’ve got to produce all of that. So in the end what I was doing was just taking out the audio, either putting it up on the intranet or burning it down to a few CDs for distribution, then I’d be providing written information about that. So they would just get the audio to use and respond to. The most common way of doing that was to respond in class. In other words they’d listen to the audio before they would get to the class, then we’d have discussion about that. The other way of doing that, that I found most useful was for them to listen to the audio and then provide email feedback and I would just collect those responses and share them with the group a little bit later.

The next need I suppose is providing extension material. That’s usually finding a subject expert and one of the things I did was produce a series of podcasts about sustainable water management. The first one, on my campus we have a small urban wetland and I interviewed – and it was literally an interview – with the manager of the wetland about what’s happening: how the wetland may have changed, there may have been a wetland there a hundred years ago, it disappeared and now it’s been put back again. So whatever topic or concept I was trying to reinforce, I’d hone in on that. Usually what I’d do is was try and do those interviews out in the open so you get lots of background atmospheric- type stuff, birds singing along, the wind, sometimes traffic, the people seem more relaxed in their own context, they seem to open up a bit more in the area that they’re involved in when they’re outside. I’d do that as a formal interview, so I’d be asking questions and

I would cut those up into either five or roughly ten-minute segments and sometimes provide a front end to those. So I would write a little piece saying, look, this ties in with this particular topic and it’s about infiltration of rainfall on the soils for the wetlands or it’s about the run-off from the streets that’s collected as storm water and runs into the wetland and problems with that. So I try to tie it in and I put a bit of audio up front and something at the back which might get them to reflect upon these particular things that the person speaking actually said. So there’s a bit more work involved in that and there’s a fair bit of editing.

I also have to say at this point we haven’t been using audio as full and proper podcasts. To be a proper podcast you would have the audio up on the Internet and you’d have an RSS feed for that so people would know or be able to get information when something additional was available. Because of our limitations with our firewalls and intranets and things like that, we haven’t been able to go that full distance. Although some colleagues have just set up a full podcasting server which we’re starting to use, which is going to get around that. That’s just been a matter of time, just basically waiting 18 months or so until there’s been enough demand for podcasts to get our until there’s been enough demand for podcast to get our IT people to better develop some work-arounds for that. So that’s something you might have to think about in your own particular area.

The art of teaching with podcasts

In terms of why I thought podcasting might be useful for some of my students, it was a bit of an evolution I suppose. I’d been listening to audio on demand or in real time. In particular I was listening to a lot of stuff, particularly science based stuff from the BBC and also Radio National. One of the things I found it most useful for to start with was for our Environmental Management students – particularly in the area of Environmental Chemistry when you start looking at global warming, climate change and some of those really big issues. Well, that information can actually change pretty quickly so if you’re just relying on printed materials that you have you find that you get left a long way behind and it doesn’t really seem to engage the students quite as much as you would hope – particularly the younger students. So what I actually found I’d like to do was take little

© Commonwealth of Australia 2008 5 four or five or six-minute snippets of an interview from say, a Radio National science report or from a BBC report and present that to students to get them to think about it, reflect upon it and also come up with some sort of, not so much answers, but feedback on that. So that’s how it first started sort of gelling in my mind and that’s what I first started doing. I would actually pull stuff out of a BBC report, it might just be a three or four- minute snippet about the latest thing happening with global warming, because a new report had been released for example, and originally I was providing that to students both on the intranet but also on a CD format to get them to listen to it, and I wasn’t building it into assessment activities.

Most of our young students are flat out almost working full time jobs and studying full time as well, and don’t always get around to listening to things unless you can make it fairly convenient, so I did find that I actually had to build it into class topics. One of the things I found quite successful then was to provide the information to them and get them to provide feedback on that using the form of an email or as a class discussion.

The whole purpose of these podcasts at that stage was to provide extension material. So a little bit of extra material over and above what we would normally cover. It was also to try and provide a little bit of extra excitement and also to keep it up to date.

I use podcasts in several different ways and they are all designed to try to engage students and make the learning interesting for them. So the first one is a small step into extension material beyond what they normally need to do but often it might be a short interview with someone who is an expert in an area that we’re looking at. We’ve used a lot of experts in areas of water management for example, particularly to cover aspects of the drought and sustainable water management. So they’re getting up to date information from a perceived expert in the field and as long as they’re kept fairly short they seem to work fairly well.

The next step is to make it something which is extremely topical, I suppose, to them. So it’s something which is happening now and it’s actually important to either their life or their assignment work that they’re actually having to do and they’ll listen to it that way. That involves a bit of work because you’ve got to keep on top of that, you’re always constantly having to listen to things to see what might be out there to actually use.

© Commonwealth of Australia 2008 6 I also then extended it into things like audio assignments. So if they had some project work that had to be done, I’d often try and use small podcasts in the way of providing additional information. For example, one particular group, Garden Design students, where they had a fairly large project – they had to do a design project for a public space – we actually went walking through that public space and I collected audio of the things that they saw there, what they’re thoughts and comments were as they were walking through and tried to pick up where the gaps in their existing knowledge was at that time. Then I made several podcasts that actually tried to fill some of those gaps and provide a little bit of extension and a bit of push into them as well. I also tried to provide a little bit of extra provocation in terms of trying to push them outside of what they might normally do. In this particular case that worked by giving them information about plants that they might not normally have thought about.

There’s actually a bit of work involved in doing all of that because you’ve got to organise the collection of the audio, a bit of editing and then provide that to them but it seemed to work extremely well. I would be taking bits of audio from radio programs, quickly editing them, providing them to the students to listen to provide some comments and feedback on either in class or as an email response type.

The second time would be extension too with interviews with subject experts so to provide the additional information to them and the third one is with the audio assignments.

How that actually contribute to the learning of the students, well, it’s really about pushing them a little bit and by providing additional information to them so they think about it, building it into what they’re currently study. These things have to be linked with what they’re studying at the time. If you don’t get that timing right, then the effort seems to be wasted.

The feedback from the surveys we’ve had found that students actually really enjoy that process. So they enjoy listening to it, particularly when they can listen to them whilst they’re doing something else. So they don’t feel as though they’re wasting that time, so that they’re not there having to listen to something and they can’t do anything else. So

The other thing is about trying to provide extension information or data to students. Not all students are interested in that but I find that there’s probably a group of about a third of the students who just want to pick up a little bit more and add it into what they already know about something and try and make linkages to other subject areas that they’re actually doing as well. That part of it seems to work really well but that’s not for all students. Many students are just flat out trying to get through the basic amount they need to do just to get assessments completed and get the courses finished.

Recordings of lectures and formal presentations that have actually been done; I started doing that, so for example we may have an hour or so of soils information recorded and students want to get this information particularly if they miss sessions, and they see it as though they can listen to the audio and catch up on with stuff they missed. There’s a lot of work in that because I tend to like to take out the bits that are not particularly relevant because if in essence you may talk for an hour – by the time you go through a formal lecture you might be talking for an hour – but of that only half an hour might actually be relevant and my tendency is to try and prefer to edit out the stuff that’s not so relevant but that takes quite a bit of time. And what I’ve found was that students weren’t really listening to those unless they were really desperate.

What I tend to do now is when there’s more of a formal lecture presentation, is that I try to provide an audio summary of that. So I sit down and write maybe ten minutes of audio and talk about the important points: this is what was covered, these were the links you should establish, these are the sort of places you should be going to get the resources, this is the stuff you may have missed out on if you weren’t there. And I find that easy to do and I think the students find that more effective as well because you’re only really providing them with ten minutes worth of information and it’s condensed as opposed to them having to wade through an hour of stuff to get out the stuff they actually want. I don’t do it for every particular session, I do it for sessions that are particularly important or where lots of people have missed that particular session.

Are the podcasts actually effective? Sometimes they aren’t – what I think might be a sure-fire winner, sometimes falls flat, other times obscure little things seem to be important. The way I find out about that is by personal feedback, anecdotal feedback. Most of my students who use podcasts I do end up getting to see, so that’s probably the most often used way I get feedback. The second way is that I’ve done a couple of surveys: one a bigger, more formal one and one sort of more informal one in terms of just what content and length and those sort of things might come about. Because I’ve put the effort in beforehand and the time, the sort of feedback is that the vast majority of the podcasts have actually been useful.

Now, not everyone will use them but what I’ve found is if they’re getting extra value from using them, they will use them and find them interesting. So for example, I mentioned before about an audio assignment with a group of Garden Design students, they had to do a design for a public place, we provided additional information about the types of plants that might work in a particular environment. So there’s extra information there. Now, not everyone in the class actually listened to those. About half the class did and the feedback from those who listened to it said ‘Well, actually that was fantastic because it really just reinforced what we were already thinking and yes, I threw that group of plants out because I was a bit doubtful about them but that just reinforced what I was thinking, but also there were some other plants I didn’t think about but were mentioned, hey, that’s not too bad’. None of them followed it blindly, and it wasn’t structured in that particular way, it was just, say, ‘think about these type of things’ and that worked quite effectively. If the information provided on the podcasts is relevant to them for what they are doing then and there, in other words at the time and it’s in a form they can easily access and it’s adding value to their current learning, then podcasts will be used.

The biggest effort about podcasting is thinking about why they are needed and what form you’re going to present them in beforehand and also just keeping in touch with all the information that’s floating around in the world so you can pull a podcast out of something, or you know where you need to develop something. All sorts of little uses came up: a few students were using them as they were laying in the bath and listening to them; some listened to them while they were down at the beach as I mentioned before;

In terms of whether you can re-use the effort that you’ve put in, the really topical stuff that I might pull down from the BBC or Radio National tends to be a bit hard to re-use although I can often keep it alive for maybe up to a year, it just depends on what it is. The more formal extension type stuff I do with subject experts that I find, I structure it so that it can be re-used. So the stuff I was doing about sustainable water use could certainly be re-used. I’ve had to get a little bit of an update on one small section but the rest of the stuff has been done so that it’s timeless, if you like, and that’ll probably be relevant for several years.

The audio assignment ones are a little bit harder because you have to make sure if you’re going to put that effort in that you’re going to be re-using those sites again and we’ve actually found with the Garden Design, they tend to move around from different sites from one year to the next so that’s been a bit hard to re-use. Although there are bits of that which can actually be re-used like the different sort of plants that can be used. So I’ve found you can actually repackage some of the information. If you think about it beforehand, though, you know you might have set assignments that you use for several years in a row because of their generic nature, so there’s no reason why you couldn’t re- use the podcast. You might just have to repackage them slightly.

The maximum amount of time it seems they would be prepared to listen to something is about ten minutes and that’s if it’s with a good speaker, it’s really interesting to them and it’s also exactly what they need to do at that time. So if it’s relevant to them at that time, they are prepared to invest that little bit of extra time. Mostly you’re probably looking at four to maybe six or seven minutes. You don’t want to make it so short that you don’t have enough information in there but you also don’t want to make it so long that they become a little bit reluctant to keep listening to them. So that sort of four to six minute mark seems to be the main one. Also keep them a little bit punchy because that tends to be the media that younger students tend to consume now. Although (in) the surveys, they pretty much all said that if the information was relevant to them at the time and it was reasonably short they would just about listen to anything if it was going to be helpful to them at the time. So that’s an important point to keep at the back of your mind – it

Now, the other question that comes up from time to time is can the students create their own podcasts? For the stuff that we do, that’s actually quite difficult. We do competency based training and we just don’t have time, nor is it written in, in terms of any of the elements that they actually create their own stuff. There’s a bit of a steep learning curve learning how to put podcasts together and if you did want students to create their own podcasts and there are places where that might be achievable, you’d have to build it into the beginning of their course so that they develop those skills earlier on and then could just apply them – like they might do with PowerPoint or something similar to that – as they’re going through the course.

Now there are times when I think podcasts might be useful, particularly if you’re doing project work but if students have to meet the requirements of the project – do the project work, plus learn how to do a podcast all at the same time – my experience is that they’re not particularly interested in doing that. If you have a bit more time and you’re not bound by having to meet competency based training quite so much, particularly like say, High Schools, for example, then getting students to create podcasts I think would be an ideal situation and there may be cases for some VET programs, at Certificate I and maybe Certificate II level, where you could actually sneak stuff in where you’ve probably spent the time learning how to make podcasts in other non-VET type subjects.