In a learning context, slides have traditionally been used as ‘speaker support’ – visual aids to support live presentations. However, slide shows produced using Microsoft’s PowerPoint or Apple’s Keynote also provide a useful way to deliver packaged content for self-directed learning. This practical guide explores the potential for packaged slide shows as a learning tool and describes the many ways in which these can be developed and deployed. Slides have traditionally been used primarily for speaker support
Media elements
A slide show can incorporate all major media elements. Although the dominant forms are always likely to be still images and text, presentation software also makes it possible to animate the text and images on slides, as well as to import audio and video.
Interactive capability
As we shall see, there are many ways of distributing slide shows. Many of these are essentially passive – you watch the slide show as you would a video. Although some formats – including native PowerPoint – have the potential for quite sophisticated interactivity, this is not the normal use of packaged slide shows and we will not be examining this application in any detail in this practical guide.
As passive media, the use of packaged slide shows is largely limited to the following learning strategies: Exposition – required viewing as part of a set curriculum Exploration – as developmental material for use by learners at their own discretion
Slide shows could also act as supporting material within other strategies – instruction and guided discovery – but only as one element in a blend.
Applications
While limited in terms of interactive capability, slide shows have a great many applications. Even without narration, they can provide a visually-dynamic and engaging way to present relatively small chunks of learning content. Where they are less suitable is in presenting large bodies of text. Text is much more satisfactorily handled on a web page or in a PDF, both of which more easily allow the reader to search and scan. If you want to present lots of text, you're better off using a web page
When combined with an audio narration, slide shows take on many of the characteristics of video, allowing the learner to maintain visual focus on a sequence of images while these are explained in audio. Obviously if the intention is to depict actual events, in full motion, slides will not do as well as material captured with a video camera.
Formats
You have a wide range of distribution formats to choose from, each with its own distinct capabilities:
Animation?
Interactivity?
Narration?
Easy distribution?
Native PowerPoint/Keynote
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes if users have the application used to create
the presentation
PDF
No
No
No
Yes
Flash (using tools such as Articulate, Adobe Presenter or Snap! by Lectora)
Yes
Yes
Yes
Must be uploaded to an LMS/web server
Video
Yes
No
Yes
Yes but large files
SlideShare
No
No
Only with special ‘Slidecasting’ facility
Yes if users have Internet access.You can embed the
presentations in blogs and web pages
We’ll be examining these options in much more detail in future postings.
Coming next: creating the slides
Throughout 2011 we will be publishing extracts from The New Learning Architect. We move on to the third part of chapter 2:
What about our target audience, the learners themselves? Well, some changes are incontrovertible. First of all, the percentage of graduates in the workforce has risen enormously, as a result of the increased numbers of students now enrolled in tertiary education (UNESCO figures show a growth from 68m worldwide in 1991 to 132m in 2004). This is significant because graduates are more likely, as a result of their experiences in higher education where they have to be much more self-reliant, to have developed study skills, to be more independent as learners. Independent learners require less structure and less hand-holding. In some cases, you can just allow them to get on with it.
We clearly also have a more diverse workforce, with women taking up increasingly senior positions, and immigration and globalisation resulting in a melting pot of races, religions and nationalities. Coping with such a breadth of cultural expectations places a greater strain on less flexible training methods which depend for their success on homogeneity.
Over the last few years we have witnessed the dramatic effects of second generation web technology (sometimes called Web 2.0). Increasingly everyone is a teacher as well as a learner; nobody knows everything and everyone knows something. As Glen Reynolds writes: “Until pretty recently, self-expression on any sizable scale was the limited province of the rich and powerful, or their clients. Only a few people could publish books, or write screenplays that might be filmed, or see their artwork or photographs widely circulated, or hear their music performed before a crowd. Now, pretty much anyone can do that. And now that more people can do that, more people are doing it, and it seems to make them happy.”
George Siemens endorses this view: “Mass media and education have been largely designed on a one-way flow model (structure imposed by hierarchy). Hierarchies, unlike networks and ecologies, do not permit rapid adaptation to trends outside of established structure. Structure is created by a select few and imposed on the many: The newspaper publishes, we consume. The teacher instructs, we learn. The news is broadcast, we listen. Now we are entering a two-way flow model, where original sources receive feedback from end-users, we need to adjust our models to fit the changed nature of what it means to know.” He goes on, “We are co-creators, not knowledge consumers. We are no longer willing to have others think for us.”
And computer games have had their effect too. According to William Winn, the new digital natives (those brought up with technology, as opposed to the ‘digital immigrants’, who’ve had to learn later in life) “think differently from the rest of us. They develop hypertext minds. They leap around. It’s as though their cognitive structures were parallel, not sequential.” As Mark Prensky points out, “Traditional training and schooling just doesn’t engage them. It’s not that they can’t pay attention, they just choose not to. What today’s learners really crave is interactivity – the rest basically bores them to death.”
Yep, learners are changing. References: Knowing Knowledge by George Siemens, Lulu, 2006. An Army of Davids by Glenn Reynolds, Nelson Current, 2006.
William D Winn quoted by Peter Moore in Inferential Focus Briefing, September 1997. Digital game-based learning by Mark Prensky, McGraw-Hill, 2001.
Coming next in chapter 2: Have the opportunities and constraints changed?
Return to Chapter 1 Obtain your copy of The New Learning Architect
Throughout 2011 we will be publishing extracts from The New Learning Architect. We move on to the second part of chapter 2:
A function of living and working in what is increasingly becoming, at least in the developed world, an information society, is that there is more to know than can possibly be taught. According to Richard Saul Worman , “a weekday edition of the New York Times contains more information than the average person was likely to come across in a lifetime in seventeenth century England.”
When the knowledge that employees need to do their jobs changes so rapidly, it becomes pointless to try and teach it all. As George Siemens points out, “The connections that enable us to learn more are more important than our current state of knowing. ‘Knowing where’ and ‘knowing who’ are more important today than knowing when and how.” Charles Jennings, formerly of Reuters, takes a similar view: “The word ‘knowledge worker’ in today’s world is a misnomer. Knowledge workers actually need to hold less knowledge in their heads to do their jobs than they did 20 years ago. However, they need to have the skills to be able to find the right information and knowledge, and build it into capability as efficiently as possible.”
According to Robert E Kelley , when employees were asked whether they believed that the retention of information in their heads was important for them to do their job well, in 1986 75% agreed, while in 1997 this had reduced to 15-20%. Kelley guessed that by 2006 the figure could be as low as 8-10%.
Even in the area of skills development, l&d departments are struggling to keep up. In a large-scale survey published in 2007 by SkillSoft , “almost two-thirds of employees said they had been asked to carry out tasks in areas where they felt insufficiently trained or where they were lacking the necessary skills. When asked if they could do a better job if they received more training, 65.9% said yes.”
I’d say that requirements are clearly changing. References: Information Anxiety by Richard Saul Worman, Doubleday, 1989. Knowing Knowledge by George Siemens, self-published, 2006. How to be a star at work by Robert Kelley, Three Rivers Press, 1999. The Future of Learning, SkillSoft, 2007
Coming next in chapter 2: Have learners changed?
Return to Chapter 1 Obtain your copy of The New Learning Architect
In part 1 of this guide, we looked at what podcasts are and how they can be used. In part 2 we examined how you prepare for and then record your podcasts. In this final part, we look at what you can do to enhance your recording and prepare it for distribution.
Post-production
It could be that, when you listen to your podcast recording, it sounds great and you’re happy to release it as is. Perhaps you recorded it in a studio and the engineer has supplied you with a perfect master. Even if not, sometimes a ‘rough and ready’ approach is all that’s required and the priority is to get your podcast out as quickly as possible. However, a little care in editing could make your recording sound very much more professional, so it’s probably worth getting to know what is possible. Use a tool like Audacity to edit your audio
First priority is to delete unwanted ‘takes’, cut out any silences and remove any obvious mistakes. To do this, you’ll need some audio editing software. If you have access to professional quality software and know how to use it then great, but you’ll only need basic functionality and a simple editor like the free Audacity is all that you really require. Audio edits are achieved using simple cut, copy and paste functions, just like word processing, except here you’ll be editing an audio waveform rather than blocks of text. This is easier than it might sound, because the waveform indicates quite clearly where in the recording there is speech and where there is silence. If you’re finding it hard to locate exactly the point in the recording that you wish to edit, you can easily zoom in and enlarge the waveform.
You might like to consider editing in a short piece of music at the beginning and end of your podcast, just like you’d hear on a radio programme. If it’s not your own music, then you’ll either need to pay a royalty or use a clip from one of the royalty-free audio sites.
If the audio volume levels in your recording vary too widely, you can either select the offending pieces and raise or lower the volumes, or apply a ‘compression’ effect. Compression automatically reduces peaks and boosts low signals, so there is less difference between the loudest and softest pieces.
If your podcast is lengthy, i.e. more than ten minutes, you might consider chopping it up at this point into a number of shorter ‘episodes’. This will obviously involve you in some more file manipulation, but it will also reduce the size of each podcast file, thus speeding up download, as well as making it easier for listeners to access the content that they are most interested in. Export your finished podcast as an MP3 file
When you are completely happy with your recording, your next step is to convert your file to MP3 format for distribution. Assuming the main content of your file is the spoken word, you can safely export to MP3 at 64Kbps / 44.1Khz / mono. Don’t worry if you don’t understand these technicalities – you just need to choose the right option from the list! If you’re unhappy with the quality, try upping the bit rate to 128Kbps. You might want to use the stereo option if your podcast contains an interview or panel discussion, but only if you recorded it in stereo!
Distribution
So, your podcast is ready. Now all you need to do is make it as easy as possible for people to listen to it. You have plenty of options:
Send it round as an email attachment.
Attach it to a forum or blog posting.
Upload it to your learning management system or virtual learning environment.
Make it available on your web site or intranet.
Listeners could themselves, if they wish, import your podcast into iTunes and allow the software to copy the file over to their iPod for listening on the move. This involves you in no work, but is not the friendliest option, particularly if you are going to be releasing a series of podcasts. Much better to set up your podcasts so users can subscribe to the whole series. That way, each time you release a new podcast, iTunes will automatically download it and copy it to the user’s iPod at the next available opportunity. For this to work, your podcast needs to be made available with an RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feed. All blog posts work with RSS, so this is one way of setting up the feed – simply set up a new blog and attach each new podcast to a new post. Alternatively, use one of the many available podcast hosting services. Make sure you label your RSS feed with an appropriate title, author name and description – for more details, see Apple’s own guide to Making a Podcast. Your podcasts can be listed in the iTunes Podcast Directory
That concludes this podcasting guide, one of a whole series of how-to guides that we’ll be posting on the Onlignment blog this year. They will all be included (along with suitable pics!) in our Digital Learning Content: A Designer’s Guide e-book, due for release later in the year.
Happy podcasting! Download this series of posts as a PDF
Throughout 2011 we will be publishing extracts from The New Learning Architect. We now move on to the first part of chapter 2: Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose
At the time of writing it is 2010. Around 32 years previously (a whopping 100000 years if you think in binary), I entered the learning and development profession. It wasn’t called learning and development then, of course, it was called training, but this appears to have been no more than a superficial re-branding.
In my first week as Finance Training Specialist, I attended a five-day residential classroom course at the seaside in Hove called Techniques of Instruction. It was run by an organisation called BACIE, now defunct. After a few preliminaries when we explored some of the pop-psychology theories about the way that people learn, we got straight down to the real action – learning how to instruct a group in a classroom setting, with the aid of a flip chart and, for the brave and more technologically-minded, some overhead projector transparencies. This course was sold on to a professional body when BACIE closed down and amazingly is still being run in almost exactly the same way today. True, it now lasts four days and PowerPoint has replaced the OHP, but essentially it’s the same.
As we shall confirm in a moment, the world as it affects the learning and development profession has changed dramatically in those 32 years. But in so many organisations (and I admit there are plenty of admirable and inspiring exceptions), training carries on regardless:
As a default option, formal training is conducted in the classroom, typically in substantial chunks (measured in days rather than hours).
Where the classroom is completely impractical or the subject matter of the training is less interesting to the classroom trainers, the remaining formal training is conducted in the form of interactive self-study lessons (mostly computer-assisted, but sometimes with the aid of videos or workbooks).
The rest (and that’s the major part) is entrusted to Nellie, who passes on her accumulated wisdom ‘on-the-job’.
Now it’s possible that this strategy (assuming, of course, that it has ever been consciously thought through) is as relevant now as it was all those years ago (assuming, again, that it ever was). Change for the sake of it benefits no-one. But even the most conservative l&d professionals would admit that it is at least worth checking to see. Has the situation changed sufficiently to warrant a rethink? Could we be doing better?
In 2006, in The Blended Learning Cookbook, I suggested a methodology for the design of blended learning solutions. The first stage in this methodology was a situation analysis, with three elements:
A definition of requirements, in terms of performance outcomes and learning objectives.
An analysis of the target audience – their preferences, prior knowledge, ability to learn independently, and so on.
A review of the practical constraints and opportunities – time, budget, skills, numbers, geographical dispersion, equipment, facilities, etc.
It occurs to me that these same three elements are as relevant when looking at the overall strategy as they are when designing a single intervention – after all, a learning and development strategy is the ultimate blended solution.
Coming next in chapter 2: Have requirements changed?
Return to Chapter 1 Obtain your copy of The New Learning Architect
Throughout 2011 we will be publishing extracts from The New Learning Architect. Here is the fourth and final part of chapter 1.
To be a professional means a lot more than simply doing whatever the client wants. You wouldn’t hire an interior designer only to inform them that you’ve already chosen all the colour schemes and furnishings; you wouldn’t engage an accountant and then explain to them the way you wanted them to process your figures (unless of course you worked at Enron); you wouldn’t employ a fitness trainer and then tell them what to include in your workout; and you wouldn’t buy a dog and then insist on doing all the barking.
So why, then, do we continue to encounter situations in which line managers tell the guys from l&d exactly what they want in terms of learning interventions, with the expectation that they’ll simply take these instructions and run. “You’d like a six-hour e-learning package to train customer service staff to sell over the telephone? A two-day workshop to teach every detail of a new company system to all employees, regardless of whether or not they will be using it? A one-hour podcast to teach manual handling skills? No problem. That’s what we’re here for, to meet your requirements.”
Hang on a minute, you’re probably thinking. This isn’t an encounter between a professional and a client, it’s simply order taking.
When asked to jump, a professional does not ask “how high?” They say, “Let’s talk about this a little, because jumping may not be the best solution for you in this situation.” And if this tactic doesn’t work and the professional is told in no uncertain terms that jumping is the only acceptable option, then he or she has two choices: either they resign and get another job where their role as a professional is properly valued; or they agree to go ahead, but only after having expressed quite clearly in writing that jumping is against their best advice.
Learning and development isn’t common sense; it isn’t intuitive. If it was then experts wouldn’t lecture at novices for hours on end; they wouldn’t insist on passing on everything they know, however irrelevant, however incomprehensible. That’s why we have l&d professionals, so they can explain, in terms that the lay person can clearly understand, how people acquire knowledge and develop skills, and how best to support this process. If the customer doesn’t hear this advice, they will assume that the people in l&d are just the builders, not the architects; and, if no-one seems to be offering architectural services, they’ll take on the task for themselves.
Coming next: Chapter 2: Time for a rethink
Chapter 1, part 1: Architects for learning; part 2: Learning occurs in many contexts; part 3: The learning architect is a professional Obtain your copy of The New Learning Architect
Most people will be familiar with the big web conferencing providers, but there is an increasing number of smaller, simpler services that let you set up instant meetings with the minimum of fuss. The latest entrant to this market is slideshare with their new Zipcast offering.
This isn’t an in depth review, and in fairness the tool is so simple it probably doesn’t need it.
What did I like?
It really is as simple as they say; from any presentation on slideshare (yours, or anyone else’s) simply click on the Zipcast link to log in and start your meeting
There’s no requirement to install anything (assuming you have the Flash plug in)
In the brief testing that I did this morning, there was no lag in updating the slides
Video quality was acceptable
The overall functionality is most of what you need for a simple presentation
Guests can log in with their slideshare or Facebook account
What was I less sure about?
The free version doesn’t provide audio (a conference call service is available with a premium plan). This is an understandable limitation, but if I was going to fire up Skype for audio, I could just share my presentation that way.
As I have accounts with the bigger services, I would tend to use them when at my desktop. This kind of simple ad-hoc meeting is something I’m more likely to do on the move, but the problem is these days I may only have my iPad with me, and the lack of Flash means this is a no go
Despite having a couple of criticisms, I think this is a really promising start. It’s already a very usable solution, particularly if you already have presentations stored on slideshare.
In part 1 of this guide, we looked at what podcasts are and how they can be used. In part 2 we move on to look at how you prepare for and then record your podcast.
Pre-production
A podcast needs a plan. Even if you are intending just to thrust a microphone in front of an unsuspecting interviewee, you need to know what questions you are going to ask and who would be best equipped to answer them. As I mentioned in the previous posting, radio is an excellent model here. The presenter of the programme would have researched the topic, got to know a little about their guests and prepared their questions. They would be mindful of how long each segment of the programme was intended to last. Scripting:
As a general rule, a script is only needed for a monologue and monologues should only be used in moderation. Listeners tune out when the same voice goes on for too long, however interesting the speaker. On radio, they would only rarely hold on a single voice for more than a few minutes. But if a monologue really is what is required, think first about whether a script is absolutely essential. Listeners will tune out if the same voice goes on for too long
Professional voiceover artists are very good at reading a script so it doesn’t sound like they’re reading a script. By and large, the rest of us aren’t. If you’re going to be doing the voice as well as preparing the script and you feel confident enough to work directly from your outline, then go for it. An alternative is to do a trial recording with you improvising from the outline, then convert this to a full script, ironing out the less successful elements. That way, you’ll end up with a tight script that sounds natural. A professional voiceover artist can make reading from a script sound natural
When scripting, it’s hard to avoid slipping into report writing mode. Keep reminding yourself that the words you are writing will be read aloud, not from the screen. Try speaking the words yourself and keep revising until you can put them across effortlessly.
Whatever you do, avoid what Cathy Moore calls corporate drone. Write as you would speak. That means short sentences, simple language, active voice (“The cat ate the mouse” not “The mouse was eaten by the cat” ) and contractions (“I can’t remember …” not “I cannot remember …”). You can also help yourself by making absolutely clear (perhaps in bold type) which words need special emphasis.
Production
Professional recording:
When it comes to recording your podcast, nothing beats a recording studio. Here you will be able to record in perfect conditions, in a specially-prepared room without excessive reverberations or extraneous noise, with an engineer who handles all the technical stuff allowing you to concentrate on communicating, and with the right microphones and editing equipment to ensure a perfect recording. So, if you can, choose this option first. Studios are nowhere near as expensive as you might think and there are lots of them around. If you prepare well, so you can get on with the recording without delay, you probably only need to book for one or two hours. You can't beat a professional recording studio for quality
At the end of the session, have the engineer provide you with all the digital files in their highest quality format , i.e. as they were recorded, ideally with all the obvious mistakes and pauses edited out. If you do ask the engineer to convert the files into their final, compressed format, then make sure you are also provided with copies of the originals, so you can easily make changes in the future. Doing-it-yourself:
Of course it will not always be possible to use a professional recording studio, either because of budget or because you haven’t got time to get it all organised. If you’re going to do the recording yourself, then with a little care you can still obtain excellent results. Working with one microphone is always going to be easier. Of course if you’re recording a monologue, then that’s all you will need, but even with interviews you can still manage:
You can direct the mic at the interviewee to record all the answers to the questions, then record your questions again later. This will mean that you have to edit the questions in, which will require some cutting and pasting.
You can use a hand-held mic and direct it at whoever’s speaking at the time. This will work fine as long as you don’t talk across each other.
You can use a single hand-held mic to record interviews
Although almost any microphone will deliver reasonable results when recording speech, it pays to use a decent one. Assuming you’re not wanting to hand hold the mic and you’re recording directly to a computer, then you should look at a USB condenser mic. There are now lots available and you shouldn’t have to pay over $100. It pays to add a pop shield, an inexpensive accessory that stops the signal level exploding whenever the letter ‘p’ is spoken (and yes, this does make a real difference). If you want to get recording studio quality, you might also purchase portable soundproofing materials for deadening the sound. See Soundproofing and acoustics for podcasters.
USB condenser mic Portable soundproofing and pop shield
However good the microphone, you need to ensure a good quality signal. That means positioning the mic 4 or 5 inches away from whoever is speaking and setting the input level on your computer or recording device as high as you can without suffering ‘clipping’ (digital overload) when someone speaks loudly. If you record with multiple mics, you'll need a mixer Multiple mics:
If you are running a panel discussion or want to conduct an interview without worrying about who’s got the mic and when, then you’ll need more than one mic. That makes things a little more complicated, because you’ll then need some sort of ‘mixer’ to sit between the mics and the computer or recording device. The mixer allows you to plug in multiple mics, balance the volumes, position the various inputs in the stereo mix and provide a single, combined signal for recording. If all this is too much for you, you probably are better off using a professional facility.
Coming next: Part 3 – editing and distributing your podcast Download this series of posts as a PDF
Throughout 2011 we will be publishing extracts from The New Learning Architect. Here is the third part of chapter 1.
When you are a professional, others seek you out for your particular expertise in a field or discipline. They will expect you to behave in accordance with the ethics of your profession, with their interests as client to the foremost.
The learning architect will be familiar with the tools of their trade, in particular the methods and media that can be used to facilitate learning. Educational and training methods are relatively timeless, even though we sometimes update the labels (‘job aids’ become ‘performance support materials’), so Socrates would have had much the same choices available when designing his ‘interventions’ as we do now. However, we are constantly rethinking the methods we should use in particular situations, in the light of new thinking about the process of learning at work, continuing research into learning psychology and, more recently, huge advances in the field of neuroscience. An l&d specialist who was inducted into the profession thirty years ago would now be seriously out-of-step with current thinking if they had not engaged in continuing professional development (CPD). Keeping up-to-date is especially important when you consider that l&d has been saddled with more than its fair share of pop psychology, much of which has gone unchallenged for far too long.
Educational and training methods are important because they determine the effectiveness of an intervention. The learning architect has to understand which methods will work in which situations, or risk pouring yet more hard-earned corporate dollars down the drain. Each organisation is different and each functional area within each organisation is likely to be different too. The learning architect has to strike the right balance in each case between formal, non-formal, on-demand and experiential learning to meet the particular learning requirement for the particular target audience, and in consideration of the practical constraints and opportunities. They also have to make a judgement on how much of this design for learning needs to rely on top-down initiatives from management and how much can be managed effectively by employees themselves from the bottom-up.
The learning architect also has to be up-to-date with developments in learning media, the technologies through which learning strategies are realised. Our hypothetical l&d specialist of thirty years back would have been fully conversant with all the available media of the time, the flip charts and whiteboards, overhead projectors and video players. Unfortunately for the learning professional, learning media do not stand still like methods – we have seen an almost exponential growth in available media as computers and mobile devices interact over high-speed networks. Whichever method you intend to use in an intervention, you have many more choices when it comes to the means of delivery. Do you want to hold that discussion in a face-to-face workshop, in a live online session, through a teleconference or using a forum? If you want to share some content do you print out a booklet, stick it on a web page or record it as a podcast?
The learning architect does not have to be an expert in each new technology, just as an architect of buildings does not need to be a skilled carpenter or glazier. But they do need to know the essential characteristics and properties of each medium, the opportunities and limitations that these afford and the applications for which they are best suited. There can be no such thing as a technophobic learning architect, any more than there is an architect of buildings who hasn’t come to terms with the basics of plumbing and electrics.
Coming next: What it means to be a professional
See chapter 1, part 1: Architects for learning See chapter 1, part 2: Learning occurs in many contexts Obtain your copy of The New Learning Architect
The simplest way to look upon a podcast is as an audio recording. Strictly speaking, podcasting is a more sophisticated concept than this, which involves a user subscribing to an ongoing series of recordings, which are then automatically downloaded to the user’s computer as they are released, and then copied to the user’s iPod or similar MP3 player for listening to as and when the user wishes. In practice, once you have produced a learning podcast, you don’t really mind how it is accessed. Yes, lots of users will find it convenient to listen to the recordings on their iPods while they commute to work, walk in the park or workout in the gym, but they might find it just as useful to listen to the podcasts directly from their PC or even from an audio CD. You can listen to a podcast as well from a laptop as you can from an iPod
Media elements
A podcast can employ only one media element and that’s audio. Although, in general use, podcasts will often contain music, for learning purposes the primary component will usually be speech. As an alternative verbal channel to text, speech benefits because it conveys tone of voice as well as the words, but the listener is not able to control the pace at which the words are delivered. Delivery of the spoken word is much slower than the speed at which a person can read, which makes a podcast an unsuitable tool for reference information. Although audio does have limitations as a stand-alone medium, it allows the listener to maintain visual attention on the environment around them, which they would certainly need to do if they were on the move.
For more information on audio as a medium, see our posting The elements of online communication: audio. The fact that a podcast is an audio-only medium leaves the eyes free to concentrate on other things
Interactive capability
A podcast is a passive medium with no interactive capability except simple navigation. As such, its use is limited to the following learning strategies:
Exposition – required listening as part of a set curriculum
Exploration – as developmental material for use by learners at their own discretion
Podcasts could also act as supporting material within other strategies – instruction and guided discovery – but only as one element in a blend.
Applications
While limited in terms of media elements and interactive capability, podcasts have a great many applications. You should be encouraged by the success of radio over more than eighty years. Radio has the same limitations – audio only, no interaction – yet continues to entertain and inform hundreds of millions of people daily. While it is easy to think of podcasts as a way of delivering monologues – such as lectures – you will rarely find this technique in use on the radio. The best applications employ multiple voices and a lively, informal style. Consider using podcasts for interviews, panel discussions, debates and drama. Wrap these up in familiar radio formats such as news shows, plays, talk shows, reports from the field, journalistic investigations and so on. The power of audio can be easily demonstrated by the enduring success of radio
Part 2 – Preparing for and recording your podcast Download this series of posts as a PDF
In a learning context, slides have traditionally been used as ‘speaker support’ – visual aids to support live presentations. However, slide shows produced using Microsoft’s PowerPoint or Apple’s Keynote also provide a useful way to deliver packaged content for self-directed learning. This practical guide explores the potential for packaged slide shows as a learning tool and describes the many ways in which these can be developed and deployed.
