The Role of Podcasting in Education

Different teaching methods and educational technologies have a great impact on preparing a convenient learning environment and educational effectiveness for students. One of the effective technologies in the field of education is electronic learning. One branch of e-learning is podcasting. The present paper begins with a discussion of podcasting and its educational applications, and briefly reviews procedures and current progress in the field of podcasting. Podcasting is a means of publishing audio and video content on the web as a series of episodes with a common theme. These episodes are accompanied by a file called a “feed” that allows listeners to subscribe to the series and receive new episodes automatically. This technology has a strong potential to improve educational experience and increase learning effectiveness. Podcasting can archive educational lectures of instructors and distribute them for reviewing. Complementary audio-visual educational contents can be prepared by podcasting. Students and other interested people can easily and conveniently access these podcast files. Moreover, students can be encouraged to create and distribute their special educational podcast as homework. Generating appropriate content for a podcast is typically the most time-consuming and labor-intensive part of the process. These steps include planning, writing and recording content, as well as audio/video editing, and file compression. Higher education institutions are using podcasts out¬side of the classroom in a variety of different applications. In summary, although the use of podcasts is popular among faculty members and students, and seems to improve educational effectiveness, a lot of extensive rigorous pedagogical research and review should be done on podcasts.