More about Purdue’s New Podcast Lecture Service
As I mentioned earlier, Purdue University recently launched BoilerCast, a service that allows instructors to upload podcasts of their lectures. According to a representative at the school, BoilerCast has logged 533 downloads in its first week online. Early adopters seem to include those who have already been recording their lectures in some form. From the same article:
Gerald Wasserman, a professor of psychology and psychobiology at Purdue and one of the first teachers to join the service, said its was simply common sense. He used the old cassette system and updated it for today’s students, as a study aid.
“The course material I teach includes a lot of new scientific terms and the students are really in the position of almost learning a new language,” he said.
And David Tate, who teaches a popular forensics class at Purdue, signed up for the service to prevent truancy.
“We used to videotape the class, but students stayed home,” he said. “The point of class is coming and interacting, so we made the podcast available instead.
The point about wanting students to attend lectures to interact does not match my experience. It is really hard to have a meaningful interaction in a lecture-style class unless you really change the way you do it and turn it into something other than a lecture(games, discussion-based, etc). I think the best interaction is consolidation through conversation, whether online or not. But you should still have access to the lecture archive as a resource.
Comment by Jean-Claude Bradley — August 27, 2005 @ 9:11 am
I agree with your comment about lectures and interaction, and I’m not sure why offering audio over video would provide any more incentive for a student to come to class and interact. I would think that video, perhaps more so than audio, could convey a more palpable sense of what the student was missing, thereby (perhaps) incenting the student to come to class.
At any rate, it’s interesting to note that when Purdue speaks of podcasts, they seem to refer to audio only, in contrast with the way the term is starting to be used to apply to audio and video by the likes of Apple. Definitions aside, it seems unfortunate that the BoilerCast service may support audio only. A format-neutral syndication service supporting learning seems like the way to go.
Comment by Dan Karleen — August 27, 2005 @ 12:23 pm
The current podcasting system here at Purdue is audio onlyb because it replaced an existing cassette classroom audio recording service. There are a number of visionary instructors on campus who understand that integrating a videotape of the class session into their curriculum can beneficial to students, and that attendance can be managed as well. We have been videotaping lectures of select courses (by request of the instructor) for several years now. The instructors have been posting links to these on their coruse websites such as http://www.tech.purdue.edu/Eet/courses/eet257/.
The next step for the BoilerCast system is to incorporate these video courses in to the system and deliver them using the same methods we use for the audio files. We are currently researching what woudl be a good platform independent format for the video and are leanigng toward MPEG-4. If things go well, we might have it up and running by spring semester. I’d be interested in comments from others regarding a “vidcasting” service such as this.
Comment by Michael Gay — August 30, 2005 @ 11:24 am
Michael,
I am having trouble finding the video on the 257 course - I only see pdfs.
In terms of sending video as an enclosure in a podcast, the problem is the file size. For a typical 1 hour lecture, the screencast avi is 200 Meg. You might be able to squeeze it down to 50 Meg but that is still too large for most students to download as a podcast. For 1-2 minute recordings that may be ok. Instead we convert the avi’s to a format that can be streamed like Flash. Here is an example:
http://chem243.blogspot.com
Comment by Jean-Claude Bradley — August 30, 2005 @ 12:27 pm
[…] 3) Last, as a student at Purdue University, you can now listen to lectures podcasts available via BoilerCast. Have you already tested this service? What’s your opinion about this kind of podcasts? […]
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