User:LingChen998/be bold

Podcasting extends the traditional class to more than just on campus, and especially in an age of technology and innovation, blending internet and classroom can serve as a great advantage. Podcasts been used in classrooms for various purposes and they have proven to have positive impact on student behavior. The majority of students choose to use podcast as supplementary lecture materials. They found video podcasts are both convenient and useful for revision for exams because they can access them anytime at any location, they can study and review at their own pace, and visual content helps them to reinforce the material in a different way rather than reading the textbook once again. According to Copley (Audio and video podcasts of lectures for campus-based students: production and evolution of student use), downloads of video podcast has “peaks occurring immediately before examinations or deadlines”. Not just after class, students tend to use podcasts beforehand to gain an overall understanding of the chapter or the lecture in order to take better notes in class. By doing so, students feel more confident, and much more prepared for the lecture. Therefore, the use of podcasts promotes more discussions and opinion-exchanging opportunities. In addition, for those students who missed the lecture because of sickness or other important matters, they can, of course, get notes from their classmates; However, reading notes is usually confusing and frustrating when they are just bullet points and formulas. Four studies show that “60%-80% of the students agreed that video podcasts were very useful for catching up on classes” (Exploring the use of video podcasts in education: A comprehensive review of the literature by Robin H. Kay). Podcasts give students more flexibilities. People then start to question if podcasts, in fact, reduce the attendance in the conventional classroom because they give less incentive for students to go to class? The answer is no. Studies indicate “The majority (57%) stated that video podcast use had little impact on the number of students who came to lectures, while some (31%) indicated that any effect would depend on the lecture course.”.

Podcasts are extremely useful for students who have disabilities, and for students who do not have English as their first language. A study has shown that all the questionnaires they have conducted have shown that “all of these students rated podcast as more useful than the traditional handouts”. In general, these students need more time to write things down or just simply process the information, and with the repeated play function, they are allowed to do so. In a traditional classroom setting, it is hard to pause and restart while in the middle of the lecture. However, Podcasts offer an opportunity to help them by controlling their own learning and note-taking pace en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Be_bold