Moving at the Speed of Creativity by Wesley Fryer

Professor fails to understand podcasting value

An article in today’s Daily Toreador, the newspaper of Texas Tech University, is titled “Podcasting lectures could be latest classroom tool.” The article reveals the fear and misunderstanding with which many college faculty are approaching the subject of podcasting.

In the article, TTU Classics professor Dr. David Larmour articulates common fear number one: that if podcasts are available, students won’t come to class, stating:

Attendance is not required in my class, but I can see more students staying home instead of coming to class if podcasting were available at Tech.

He also reveals a common perception among university faculty that lecture and course information should somehow be locked up in a vault and kept away from the general public. Only paying students should have access to course content.

Larmour said his biggest concern is having his own material out there for everyone to get. “I would not want my own precious material out there for everybody,” he said. “That is the main problem I have with the idea.”

In the educational environment, teachers are all levels are called to the profession by something higher than a desire for income. Certainly everyone wants to make money, but it is in the business profession that we see the desire for financial gain generally having top priority, both on individual and corporate agendas.

The perception of Dr. Larmour is unfortunately common, but is out of sync with an idealist vision of educational empowerment. Groups like the Open Content Alliance, sponsor of the amazing Internet Archive, have the slogans “Building a digital archive of global content for universal access” and “Universal Access to Human Knowledge.”

Educators at all levels should not fear podcasting. They should embrace it. Podcasting offers yet another instructional modality for interaction and content sharing. If a student can get the same intellectual experience listening to a podcast as they would sitting in a professor’s lecture, then by all means that professor should be podcasting. But hopefully, the synchronous classroom experience is much richer, more engaging and beneficial than simply listening to a recorded version.

Podcasting should and is challenging the instructional methodologies which are employed by instructors at all levels. Each teacher should consider the implications of the National Training Center’s pyramid graph of Average Learning Retention Rates:

Average Learning Retention Rates graph

Blended modality, or “hybrid” courses, which integrate the use of both online / asynchronous teaching modes as well as synchronous face to face teaching experiences, are and should continue to proliferate at all levels. The new Sloan-C report, “Entering the Mainstream: The Quality and Extent of Online Education in the United States, 2003 and 2004”, shows that “students are at least as satisfied with online courses” as they are with traditional face to face courses. The Sloan Consortium is a great resource for updated research info on distance education, as is Ray Schroeder’s Online Learning Update blog.

Podcasting is a disruptive technology, so it is natural for many people to be resistant to the changes it portends for their environment. But podcasting is a present and future trend that should be constructively embraced, as I argued in my TECSIG keynote yesterday in Austin. Access the online presentation, “Podcasting as Disruptive Transmediation,” created with free S5 presentation technology. Miguel Guhlin has posted the full audio recording from the hour long keynote on his website (MP3, 16 MB.) I’ll also published this as my a podcast with some minor additions and editing to the version Miguel posted..

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3 responses to “Professor fails to understand podcasting value”

  1. Stephan Segraves Avatar

    Isn’t the whole point of Dr. Larmour teaching a class to get his “material” out there? There is no reason for him to teach if he isn’t trying to get the information to the students.

    I had a similar problem recently with creating a note collaboration project in which Tech students could submit their notes that they took in class to a website and the notes would be available to anyone who wanted them. The project is still in the works but the main concern is that professors will be completely against it, claiming some sort of copyright violation.

  2. Travis Rodgers Avatar
    Travis Rodgers

    Why should a professor give away, for free, the very thing that makes it possible for him to earn a living? Teaching in an academic field is different from teaching at a public elementary, middle, or senior high school (for instance) for the simple fact that it is no longer teaching from a book (as it often is at “lower” levels). At the collegiate level, if the professor is worth his (or her) salt, the ideas presented are original, are the product of hours of research, and are the very thing that “makes or breaks” one’s career.

    Downloading music for free has been met with some resistance by the US government, and for good reason. If the product that one creates is available for free, professors can find themselves out of jobs if we carry the scenario to its extreme. In a more mundane vein, if enrollment drops, income at the school drops. Then, either wages of existing professors or the number of appointments of professors drops. In a very real sense, this removes income from professors. Why on Earth should they submit to something like this?

    If Larmour’s point is that even students enrolled in his class can access the information without showing up to class…and that this is a problem…I would say that ideally he’s correct. Unfortunately, the reality seems to be that most students would do about the same with or without interaction, simply because most students do not take advantage of the opportunity for interaction in the classroom and in office hours.

    If Larmour’s point is copyright violation, I think that he is exactly correct. If you’re not a paying student, what duty does Larmour have to educate you? I mean, can’t the same argument levelled against Larmour be applied to doctors? Why are they making money? Shouldn’t they be helping people even if no one gets paid? Shouldn’t contractors just build houses for people, even if they don’t get paid? I think the answer, in all cases, is, “No.” And I think you’re asking something unreasonable of academics.

  3. […] This led me onto Wesley Fryer’s blog “Moving at the Speed of Creativity” and his thoughts on podcasting as “disruptive transmediation” and a piece on a professor who didn’t understand the value of podcasting […]