Do students actually listen to podcasts?

From the Kept-Up Academic Librarian, a link to an article on podcasts. The article reports the results of a consumer survey done by Bridge Data. They found that 80% of podcasts never reach a mobile device.  The vast majority stay on the desktop or are deleted without being listened to.

Its difficult to find the original source of the survey, though the Diffusion Group which penned the article do a bunch of surves on podcast users. But it's probably safe to assume that it was a general survey and so doesnt cover the use of podcasts in academic settings, by students.

Now that would be pretty interesting. I had a quick look at some of the Duke materials evaluating their iPod program. There is some interesting stuff there. But I havent seen a lot of info from other places on how students are using the recordings. My hunch is that the level of usage is probably a whole lot lower than anticipated.

Comments

[David Nickles]

In a bizarre twist, the EdTechPost blog entry dances between an argument that blogging in every form is a good thing with a suggestion that this asynchronous delivery of audio and video to an offline media player is hyped to replicate a synchronous F2F lecture. Podcasting is audio/video blogging and the content should be created in this mind set. If you are capturing a traditional lecture (and I agree this method of delivery is often broken) and try to distribute it this way, it will indeed be an uninspired testimonial. What is effective is having access to course content or a content expert when you are trying to learn something and need it. I have found that Podcasting course content in addition to traditional F2F meetings increases course resource accessibility and supplements (and even increases) course content.

The Duke University effort is admirable in that the University is boldly approaching the technology from the bottom up. They started by giving all incoming freshman iPods with voice recorder attachments to see how they use them to capture content. However, with this method I fear the cart is being placed before the horse. And a recent article stated that Duke had 5+ professors, now Podcasting or creating and broadcasting content particularly for the purpose of delivery to the iPods.

At the University of Hawaii with ICS101, an introductory computer fluency class, I am taking this latter approach. The lecture content is recreated with the channel of delivery in mind. The course is restructured to take advantage of an additional asynchronous media-rich engagement. Online listening quizzes through a course management system like WebCT can be taken and retaken after a student visits and revisits the material in the Podcast (audio and PDF files come over the RSS feed). There is no question that all students make use of the Podcasts as it is a necessity point-wise to succeed in the class. Why do this? Some content fits this model well and now we notice that lectures are more interactive because students have been exposed to material and foundations before topics are discussed in class.

I also agree there are many issues of the Web 2.0 nature that need to be addressed to extract the semantics from the growing multimedia content on the Web. Since this is progressing down the RDF/XML markup path at the moment, I think Scott Leslie is right in that the RSS/XML feed is leading us that way already when we abstract and summarize our media posts for the RSS entries.

In conclusion, I would love to a have an iPod personally engraved for you with 'grumpy old git,’ to help 'git' you out there and into the world of Podcasts. Having an offline personal media player in your pocket adds tone and subjectivity. It has created the multimodal blog. It is empowering to have an iPod in your pocket to both listen and capture with. Audio blogging is transforming blogging and I believe an audio blogosphere is inevitable.

[Scott Leslie]

David,

"If you are capturing a traditional lecture (and I agree this method of delivery is often broken) and try to distribute it this way, it will indeed be an uninspired testimonial."

That pretty well sums up a lot of my dissatisfaction in a nutshell. That, plus the difficulties finding and processing stuff locked in audio files - yes, RSS, tags etc are starting to help, but as it stands now audio itself is not searchable in a way that helps me locate what I need it when I want it.

I think anytime people can produce alternate formats (e.g. audio recordings of a lecture you are already doing) without a lot of additional effort, that's great. Bootstrapping is a good thing, and being able to access a lecture after the fact can be helpful. What you describe I think is differnet and more exciting - actual 'blended' learninng that considers the latter use *as* it is creating the content in the first place.

Anyways, like I said, maybe I will revisit this at some point, never say never, and I will gladly accept a personally engraved iPod from any willing donors ;-)

Cheers, Scott

(And Glenda, immense apologies for hijacking your comment area - I have been a bad bad blogger for many months now, the spammers forced me to turn comments off - I am desperately trying to get a new wordpress blog launched with ultra-spam-killing abilities, anyways, thanks.)

[Glenda]

No worries Scott, its always nice to have people participate. And we can enjoy yours and others insights so long as the spambots dont know I am here.

My own interest in the podcast use question is much less profound than yours or David's. it stems from two things:
1. a comment by John Seely Brown about how at Xerox Parc they videoed the guest speakers but no one ever watched the videos.
2. an observation when I was teaching and when I was a student that students sometimes confused photocopying with reading. They were anxious to photocopy readers but seemed almost to think that that was all they needed to do. reading did not necessarily follow photocopying.