In the first presentation of the HigherEdBlogCon today, Mark Ott highlighted some of the inherent problems of lecture podcasts and explained how he trys to overcome them by ‘screencasting’.
The main problem with audio podcasts is that audio is not scannable – so while it’s useful for a student listening to the whole 50min lecture it’s no good for a student who is revising or reviewing material as it’s difficult to find a particular point in the lecture.
He uses screencasts – camtasia recordings of PowerPoint with audio – to overcome this. He also makes them shorter – lecture segments of 5-15mins covering 1 or 2 topics and he records them at ‘full speed’ i.e. no pauses that you would find in a real live lecture.
This is of course extra work but perhaps the output is more useful. At least from a reviwing / revising perspective.
