Podcast Lectures as a Primary Teaching Technology: Results of a One-Year Trial

How useful are podcasts in the political science classroom? Some educators argue that podcasts will revolutionize education; others are less convinced. However, to date, the evidence on podcasts has been slim. This article reports the results of a year-long trial using podcasts to aid in teaching political science to undergraduates at a research university. This trial does not test hypotheses but constitutes an exploratory probe that tells us more about how students and educators use, and react to, podcast lectures. The results suggest that podcasts are not likely a revolutionary teaching technology but can nonetheless have useful roles in the college classroom. Students liked the control, but few took advantage of the podcasts' portability, and most preferred to listen to them while reading lecture notes. No evidence was found for a relationship between student performance and their opinion of, or technique for using, the podcasts. For the professor, podcast lectures appeared to create time both in and out of class for more productive pursuits. Other findings, based on quantitative and qualitative survey data, generate some initial correlations and highlight anomalies for future pedagogy research. Keywords: learning stylesMP3pedagogy For their generous support and advice, the author would like to thank the Kauffman Foundation, Paul Baker, Lori Breslow, Matthew Roberts, Carolyn Shaw, and the editors and reviewers at the JPSE. Notes ∗Open-ended question; answers subsequently grouped in categories defined by author. N = 61. ∗p < .10; ∗∗ p < .05. Ordinary least squares, standard errors in parentheses. †These results represent a subset of the regression models run. In no case was a statistically significant relationship found between student performance and podcast opinion or between podcast opinion and any other variable. ∗Open-ended question; answers subsequently grouped in categories defined by author. Shaded entries implicitly call for a greater role for podcast lectures. ∗In Role-Play & Debate exercises, the members of each country team are given the team's analytical task. They consider it as individuals for 5 minutes, then in teams for 10 minutes. Class is then called to order. A team is chosen at random and questioned by the professor, who then draws in other individuals and teams to join in the debate. When one team's answer has an impact on another team's country (i.e., "we would put tariffs on imports of their cell phones to promote domestic production"), the second team is pressed for a response and brought into the debate. The professor moves from team to team until they are exhausted or the debates become redundant. A similar procedure is followed if the exercise focuses on solely on individual students. The term "MP3" specifically refers to a type of computer storage format. Other popular competing formats include Microsoft's WAV and proprietary WMA formats, and the open-source OGG format. However, since it is the most widely used format, the term "MP3" will be used generically throughout this article to refer to any type of computer audio file. In fact, the iPod is so popular, that the word "iPod" is slowly becoming a generic term and often refers to any portable listening device that plays audio computer files. Therefore the words "iPod," "MP3 player," and "portable audio device" are often used interchangeably in common usage. Exceptions include Allegheny College, Drexel, Duke, Purdue, Stanford, and the University of Chicago, where university support has been relatively strong and widespread. The fall 2007 course had 50 students (17 juniors, 33 seniors), the spring 2008 course had 36 students (1 freshman, 2 sophomores, 17 juniors, 16 seniors). Recordings of in-class lectures also have problems. For example, Roberts (Citation2008) reported that his live classroom discussions were captured poorly by his headset microphone. Thanks to an anonymous reviewer for suggesting these alternate hypotheses. Though Roberts appears to have asked his students about podcasts of "extra material": "how long should they be so that you would listen to them?"