2011年12月4日星期日

Week 14 Podcasting and Webcasting

Our TA Shuya brought up a very insightful question in the class. Will the popularity of shared online videos cause podcasts to obsolesce? To answer this question, I think we’d better analyze the pros and cons of each of these two media.

Media
Podcast
Online Shared Video
Pros
Require less effort on recording and editing

Take less time for upload and download

Take up smaller saving space

Can be prescribed
(automatically download)

Can be listened while driving

Transcript are usually offered

Transcript can be edited in a word spreadsheet

Catch attention quickly

More engaging

Good at explaining complex and abstruse concepts

Some have subtitles

Wildly shared in blogs, Facebook, Twitter and many other Web 2.0 platforms



Cons
Some podcasts lack of editing

Listeners easily get bored

Hard to explain complex and abstruse concepts


Require more effort on recording and editing

Take more time to
upload and download (some are not allowed to download)

Take up larger saving space

Cannot be watched while driving

Subtitle cannot be edited

The above compare and contrast informs us both media have advantages and disadvantages. The advantages explain the existing of each of media, while the disadvantages ask for the existing of the other. (Note: here the number of pros and cons cannot lead to a conclusion as which one is better, which is worse, because this is not a quantitative analysis, and I might lose some important points.) What conclusion we can make here is podcast will keep benefiting learning if we can appropriately apply it based on our understanding of its pros and cons.

The other topic of this week is webcast. I read the article, College 2.0: More Professors Could Share Lectures Online.But Should They?, which presents how professors from two camps are wrestling on the issue of videotaping and webcasting classes.

It may be helpful for considering this issue if we list those opposite propositions in another table.

Share Lectures Online
Not Share Lectures Online
Coursecasting equipments are ready or getting ready.

Equalize access to high quality education

Student would get an earlier and better sense of what they want to major.

Help students preview and review classes.

Students involve more in the class because professors offer quizzes, take attendance and showing up part of the grade to avoid skipping class.

Professors watch other’s course videos in order to improve teaching.

Professors play past recordings and focus more on organizing discussion and group projects.

Some professors are “camera shy”.

Professors would face mockery.

Classroom is a “sacred space” that may need to stay private to preserve academic freedom.

Give away too much educational content

Need time and effort to manage the recording process

Students may skip class or choose home schooling at the college level.

Copyright and intellectual property issues

Student privacy needs to be protected.


Whether we should webcast courses to the public seems to be a more controversial issue. It involves various personal, cultural, technology and policy factors. However, as an advocator of OER, I propose that if all or most needed factors are available, we should do our best to open access to the corse. 

1 条评论:

  1. You had a great idea in doing comparison/contrast charts! I wish I had thought of that for my blog. :-) I don't think that video will cause the demise of podcasting, because I think that the purposes behind the choice of format are usually deliberate. Podcasting is easier and can take on the format of a radio show, with listeners calling in and things like that. Video would make that kind of spontaneous interaction more difficult.
    There is an old rock song from the 80's called Video Killed the Radio Star, by the Buggles (I think) and this post reminded me of that song. When MTV first came out on TV and music videos were readily available to the public, many critics feared that this would end the radio DJ business. Clearly, this has not happened, as we have both music videos and radio shows still today. The purposes were different and so both can survive.

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