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April 13, 2006

Will podcasting catch on at Pitt?

The sight of people walking around listening via tiny earbuds wired to portable digital media players is becoming increasingly frequent at the University and beyond. The popular devices are known for storing vast quantities of music, but there’s lots more going on inside the electronic devices than just tunes.

The cultural phenomenon has spawned a growing number of “podcasts” — regular shows or lectures similar to a radio or television program that are delivered on line and downloaded from a computer onto the device. The recently coined term “podcast” — initially a combination of iPod (Apple’s brand-name digital media player) plus broadcast, but now broadened to include “personal on demand” as a part of the meaning — has so quickly become part of the vernacular that it was named the 2005 Word of the Year by the editors of the New Oxford American Dictionary.

“Every day this is getting bigger and bigger and bigger,” said Nick Laudato, associate director of Pitt’s Center for Instructional Development & Distance Education (CIDDE). “It’s tough to know where this is going to go.”

CIDDE is leading the way in familiarizing professors with podcasting and other technologies by offering weekly podcasts on instructional technology and Blackboard and by providing assistance for faculty who want to create their own podcasts. And Pitt’s Computing Services and Systems Development (CSSD) is examining the possibility of executing an iTunes partnership for Pitt, similar to a popular Stanford University on-line repository of podcasts.

In spite of the popularity of the word, Laudato maintains that most people don’t really know what a podcast is. “The name has both helped it and hurt it,” he said, noting many people don’t realize that an iPod isn’t needed to access podcasts (they can be downloaded to a computer), and that podcasts aren’t just for audio. Video or documents also can be part of a podcast, he said.

The key element of podcasting is the use of RSS (which stands for really simple syndication) technology that allow users to subscribe to podcasts and have them automatically downloaded to their computer, much the same as a daily paper or monthly magazine is delivered to subscribers.

While the sky’s the limit in terms of the content that can be sent, the concept is simple. “It’s just a computerized file that plays,” Laudato explained. “The thing that makes it a podcast is that it’s delivered.”

What’s needed to access podcasts is simple as well. A type of software known as an aggregator (iTunes is one example that’s available from CSSD by visiting http://software.pitt.edu) reads RSS to point to the content and download it so it can be played on a computer (using software such as Windows Media Player or QuickTime) or sent to a mobile device.

Increasing numbers of educators are taking a closer look at the potential to use both iPods and podcasting technology as a learning tool with multiple applications. For instance, students can use podcasts to practice their language skills, re-listen to lectures for better comprehension or review lectures they’ve missed.

Higher education is beginning to embrace the technology in a variety of ways. A pilot program at Duke University distributed iPods to 1,600 new students at the beginning of the 2004 fall term as part of an initiative to enhance the use of technology on campus. Results released in December 2005 showed the number of Duke students using iPods in the classroom had quadrupled and the number of courses incorporating the technology had doubled. According to figures from Duke’s Center for Instructional Technology, an estimated 1,200 students in 42 spring 2006 courses will use iPods for portions of their coursework, up from 280 students in 19 courses a year ago.

“The increased use we’ve seen has been a direct result of faculty and student innovation,” stated Tracy Futhey, Duke’s vice president for information technology and chief information officer, in a prepared release. “We expected we’d have this kind of interest, and it’s exactly the success we thought, but couldn’t be certain it would be.”

In October 2005, Stanford became the first university to offer an on-line audio repository of podcasts to the public. “Stanford on iTunes,” available on line at itunes.Stanford.edu, offers free content such as news, lectures, interviews and music. The popular site now contains more than 500 tracks and is approaching its 1 millionth download.

Some web sites, such as pickaprof.com, are offering space where professors can post podcasts of their lectures on line for students to download. Pitt communication department graduate teaching fellow Stephen M. Llano posted several lectures from his fall Argument class on the site “as an experiment,” but found few students accessed them, mostly because they were unfamiliar with the pickaprof.com web site. The situation might be different, he said, if content were posted on Pitt’s CourseWeb, with which students are quite familiar. “They kind of expect the stuff to be there,” he said.

Regardless, Llano said he’d try it again this fall to provide students with as many ways to gain access to lecture content as possible.

“It beats getting that e-mail every professor hates, ‘I missed class today, tell me what we did,’” Llano said, adding that he also finds podcasts of lectures a useful tool to help students make better class choices. A student could listen to several lectures before signing up for a course to see if his or her learning style matches the professor’s teaching style.

Although Pitt is a bit behind some other campuses in the adoption of podcast lectures, Llano predicts the practice will catch on.

“I think it will take off [here] in the next couple of years,” he said.

To familiarize Pitt professors with podcasting, CIDDE is taking a twofold approach. It recently launched two series of weekly podcasts: one focusing on the popular Blackboard system and one on instructional technology. By producing the programs, not only is CIDDE fulfilling its mission to train faculty in instructional technologies, its staffers are learning what it takes to produce podcasts and other programs.

“We’re shooting to kill multiple birds with one stone,” by talking to faculty about the new technology while using that same technology to deliver the message, Laudato said.

CIDDE’s mCasts — the “m” standing for “multiple multimedia” to show that the broadcasts may go beyond mere podcasting — began last fall. Broadcast live each week (Blackboard at noon on Wednesdays, instructional technology at noon on Thursdays) the mCasts are available on line at www.pitt.edu/~ciddeweb/index.html.

While the programs’ real-time listeners have the benefit of typing questions for the presenters, those who access them as a podcast can choose to listen any time and virtually anyplace it’s convenient.

Laudato noted that the broadcasts are useful in providing CIDDE training to faculty at the regional campuses who don’t have the advantage of face-to-face contact.

The mCasts each appear in four different formats:

• The first is pure audio, which will play on almost any computer, MP3 player or iPod.

• The enhanced version adds features that allow a listener to skip through the content and some visual content pegged to the presentation. This type won’t play on an MP3, only on iPods or computers, Laudato said.

• A video version adds the image of the presenter. “People denigrate the talking head, but it conveys information,” Laudato said.

• The fourth option, enhanced video, intersperses slides within the video version.

“It’s the same recording, the same effort, but very different versions,” Laudato said, noting that listeners may prefer different media at different times. For instance, Laudato said he has made it a habit to listen to podcasts during his weekday commute. “If I were commuting in my car, audio is great; if I were commuting on a bus, the video might be cool,” he said.

Interest in CIDDE’s programs is increasing, Laudato said, citing rising numbers of viewers in spite of little initial publicity. As they learn more, “people are seeing it and wanting to do it,” he said.

The procedure for do-it-yourselfers is simple, although staff members at CIDDE’s Faculty Instructional Development Lab can assist in getting professors started.

“All you need is a microphone and a computer and you’re in business,” Laudato said. Once a podcast is put on line, essentially anyone anywhere can access it at any time.

“It’s incredibly empowering,” Laudato said. “If you have something to say, you have a worldwide forum to say it in.”

—Kimberly K. Barlow


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