Berkman Luncheon Series: Podcasting & New Media in Education with Mark Frydenberg
Mark Frydenberg, a Bentley College professor, told us about his work with podcasting and new technologies during Tuesday’s Berkman Luncheon series. He first started doing his own podcasts of his lectures, but when he realized no one was really using them, he got his students to do the podcasts instead. He’s doing a bit with wikis, too. His hope with these technologies is to give students something they can take away from the class and bring back to the next class.
Some of the things he wondered about is whether students would want to listen to an hour-long lecture via podcast. He observes that most of his students already use portable electronic file listening devices, like iPods, so giving them class assignments using the technology wasn’t a huge leap.
Many students find the 90 minute podcasts are too long. He learned students only listen to about 6-10 minutes of a podcast, so he gave them an assignment to record a 6-10 minute podcast with another classmate about something they learned in class one day. Having students do the podcasts is a way a professor can make sure they’re learning the material well. Frydenberg has noticed through the students’ work that they might be confused about certain concepts or might not have gotten everything out of a lecture they should have.
Some students really want certain parts of the lecture, but they don’t necessarily want to listen to a lot of the 90 minute file to get to the section they want. There’s definitely a need for better and easier indexed sound files.
Rebecca MacKinnon pointed out that working with students on technological projects is a good way for people to learn from each other. There’s a good chance that students might know more about certain technologies than a professor or other classmates. By using collaborate projects, students can do hands-on work that gives them more than just a knowledge of the class material.
Frydenberg also has his students blog.
Another advantage of providing online course materials is that they’re accessible to the students at any time. Download statistics from the course Web site show many students download materials soon after class and at 2 am.
A few times during the talk, Frydenberg mentioned FeederReader, a full-service aggregator with built-in podcast abilities that runs on Windows for mobile devices.
