Thursday, December 22, 2005

A Professor Analyzes His Use of Screencasts and Podcasts

This is a followup to an earlier post about how a college professor of Chemistry was using screencasts and podcasts instead of lectures.

1) At almost every workshop I was able to help every student who came on an individual level and answer all of their questions. This was probably most helpful to a hearing impaired student in my class. He not only had transcripts of the archived lectures but also my full attention much of time as we communicated through a transcriber.

2) The average class performance was slightly better than last term, when I held lectures in class. Since most students chose to take the class fully online, holding lectures or workshops should not have had much of an effect on the average and it didn't.


He lists 12 observations total. Very interesting.

3 comments:

  1. Hmmm...so what would the motivation be for going at all?? Just to hear it in person? I think that this is a wonderful addition to lectures, but when you are paying so much money, what's the point?

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  2. Michele,

    No, he doesn't lecture at all in class. He expects the students to get the "lecture" material on their own. In class he can work with students individually or in small groups, and looks at more advanced problems/issues. It frees up time to look at interesting problems, not just the standard problems that he used to have to "cover" in class.

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