Emory Chemistry Professor Offers Enhanced Podcasts
The Emory Wheel Online reports that Emory University chemistry professor Justin Gallivan is offering enhanced podcasts of his chemistry classes available free via iTunes. The article reports that in addition to audio, visual materials are available along with the podcast. A TA takes pictures of diagrams drawn on the blackboard, which are then included as part of the enhanced podcast. In fact, the podcasts are available via iTunes. Right now I’m listening to lecture 16, which was posted December 5, 2005. Static digital images are sync’d with the audio and appear in the album artwork window as the audio is playing. If an image is difficult to decipher, you can click on the image to see it in a larger window.
This is a slightly different approach than that of Jean-Claude Bradley (Drexel U., also a chem professor), who for his iTunes feed intersperses PDFs in the RSS feed, which are then automatically downloaded by iTunes as part of the feed subscription. The PDFs include diagrams drawn during the lecture. Here is a link to his Chem 421 Organic Chemistry I lecture in iTunes.
It is interesting that he reports no drop in attendance, as do most other podcasters. It would be interesting to get some quantitative data over time to see under which conditions students feel they still have to attend the lectures. When I measured my online optional class I got a pretty steady decrease as the term progressed. http://drexel-coas-elearning.blogspot.com/2005/08/migration-from-f2f-to-online-lectures.html
Comment by Jean-Claude Bradley — December 6, 2005 @ 1:12 pm
I offer something slightly different to my students, condensed screencasts that were recorded before class began. They lack the dead air of lecture (time to write down information, time for discussion, announcements) and are parsed into individual lecture topics and last 5-20 minutes in length each. They can be found at
http://personal.jccmi.edu/ottmark/cem141films.htm
I create them for reference, after the lecture, review material, so the students already have the notes down. If not, they can always pause the screencast.
Comment by Mark Ott — December 7, 2005 @ 6:29 am