The Use of Podcasts in Education

Education researchers have discovered there is more to learning than meets the eye and that just telling or showing students information in the form of lectures and presentations may not produce as good a performance from them as finding a way to keep repeating that information without boring them to tears.

The basic premise is that when a student is shown information, they will absorb, at best, just 20% of the content. When lecturers, for example, combine showing information with giving the same information verbally, the retention rate rises to 30% but when students are able to return to that same information, over and over again, their ability to absorb it more than doubles to 70%.

With this in mind, a growing number of study courses, particularly those aimed at adults re-training or returning to the classroom are introducing Podcasts so that students can return, at their leisure, to lectures they have already attended or may have missed due to other commitments.

So what is Podcasting, according to Wikipedia a podcast is a series of audio or video digital media files which are distributed over the Internet by syndicated download, through Web feeds, to portable media players and personal computers.

Many of the students who sign up for the intensive, year-long Postgraduate Diploma in Residential Landscape Architecture course are switching careers and juggling family and other responsibilities alongside their garden design studies so introducing "anytime, anywhere" access to "repeats" of information will now form a key component of the learning tools available to them.

We would be interested in any feedback from readers on their own experiences of this type of learning mechanism.

The tutors at the Oxford College of Garden Design, for example, are currently working on a comprehensive range of Podcasts that, in effect, capture all the lectures given on the UK's top-rated garden design course.

The next intake for the diploma course, which is run from the Oxford Brookes University campus in Oxford, will be October 2009 but before then, Duncan Heather will be running a series of four-day "taster" courses which gives prospective students the chance to see if they have an aptitude for design. The taster mini-courses this year will run in March, May, July and September.