This is perhaps the most obvious way to use podcasts in the classroom: let students who miss a class catch up with the lecture by listening to it.
Professors worry, and rightfully so, that without the direct teacher-student interaction, it’s hard to know what to repeat, where to take the lecture next, and if anyone is listening. What Purdue and others are doing, however, just makes the lecture available as audio, it doesn’t eliminate the classroom setting.
Of course, professors are free to podcast their lectures without using University infrastructure to do it…at least I hope they are.
[Ed.: I initially published this post via Flock, a new browser. The public beta just came out today – guys, I need access to my blog’s categories if I’m going to use the blog-from-the-browser function. I use WordPress.]
[tags]podcasting, pedagogy, flock[/tags]