Archive for the ‘Podcasts at Penn State’ Category

Faculty Success Story: Laura Guertin

Laura Guertin at Penn State Brandywine uses podcasting and Google Earth in her earth and geoscience courses to help students grasp science principles. She has discovered that when students use these technologies, the quality of their science improves, they care more deeply about the subject matter, and they are eager to share their learning with a wider audience.

In 2005, Guertin began to record her classroom lectures in MP3 format. She makes them available to students via iTunes U , allowing them to engage in course content outside class.

Additionally, she recorded review sessions consisting of questions to help students prepare for exams. She asked them to listen to each question, pause, and try to answer it. Guertin explained, “These were fundamental questions to make sure they understood the basics, then during the test, I asked synthesis-type questions.” She said these recorded reviews are beneficial because Brandywine is a commuter campus and it is difficult to get the class together for face-to-face review. “This way,” Guertin said, “all the students had access to it.”

Now that Brandywine has a Digital Commons studio, Guertin assigns projects that ask the students to be the creators of podcasts and other digital media.

As one project in her Environment Earth course, students created an audio tour of tree species marked on a trail at Ridley Creek State Park. Each student recorded a podcast about a species, then added photos to it. Guertin said her students worked hard to create high-quality work. She observed, “They were not happy turning in something that wasnâ€™t to their satisfaction. I think itâ€™s because the projects they did are being viewed by an outside audience. I saw a sense of pride and professionalism in a way that I wouldnâ€™t have gotten if I just had them write a paper. Their voice had this inflection to it because they were excited to talk about the tree. I donâ€™t think I would have gotten as good a result in terms of the quality of the science, either.”

In October, her students visited the Solar Decathlon in Washington, D.C., a competition for energy-efficient home design. Carrying cameras and iPods with microphones, the students viewed the model homes, recorded observations, and interviewed attendees. From this, they created a virtual tour of the event, which was tied into Google Earth, an application that allows users to view a satellite image of a location. “What we’ve created can be shared throughout the Penn State community,” she said.

Guertin’s students entered the SCA/Mazda Conservation in Action Multimedia Contest, which asks young people to pick an environmental issue, describe it, and come up with a solution. The entry could be in the form of a podcast, movie, or song. She said her students chose a range of topics and technologies and that she was thrilled with the creativity of their work.

She said she was struck when a student commented, “I didnâ€™t realize I cared about this subject. Now I realize I can do something about it.” Guertin explained, “That ‘do something’ means the technology is there for them to help communicate what theyâ€™ve learned. They cared about the science and what got them into the science was learning not just that you need technology to take measurements in the field, but also that it can help communicate the science.”

Faculty Success Story: Greg Pierce

Greg Pierce in the Smeal College of Business reinforces concepts in his Finance 100 course by augmenting class meetings and textbook readings with podcasts and vodcasts (video podcasts). This allows students to review course material on an MP3 player or computer at any time or place.

Pierce said he decided to create podcasts of his lectures out of a “a sense that students are always on the go and could use supplemental material to enhance their learning.” In summer 2006, he signed up for the Podcasts at Penn State and easily learned to use ProfCast software, allowing him to record narration and synch it with his class PowerPoint slides to create “enhanced” podcasts. He posted his podcasts at Penn State on iTunes U.

Pierce said, “These lecture podcasts are designed to enhance and embellish what’s in the book, and if students have to miss a class for an employment interview, for example, they have the lectures at their fingertips. It gives them great flexibility.”

This past summer, Pierce said, he had just returned from watching his son’s baseball game when he had a fresh inspiration for providing finance problem solutions to his active students. “I had the hat on, the jacket on, the whistle, and I just went up to the whiteboard in my office and started writing out the givens, the equations, and the solutions for assigned problems,” he said. As he did so, he videotaped himself. Thus the “Finance Coach” series was born. He created videos showing how to solve the problems from each textbook chapter.

As fall approached, Pierce said, he ran out of time to edit the videos into a useable format. He asked his Schreyer Honors College students whether any of them who knew iMovie software would like to earn honors credit by assisting with the editing. As a result, he obtained the help of sophomore Kylie Nellis, who spent about one hour editing each video in iMovie.

In each Finance Coach installment, Pierce works the same problem assigned to the students, who must then submit the solution in the form of an Excel spreadsheet. He said that way, “they can see how to do the math behind the problem and not worry about it so much. Someone might argue that weâ€™re just giving them everything. My response is that Iâ€™m teaching them the mathematics on the board, then they have to take it up one level and figure out how to solve the problem by entering it into Excel.”

Nellis said, “If you’re not familiar with math or financial concepts, it’s not really daunting to sit down with your book and the Finance Coach. You know if thereâ€™s a problem, you have a resource right away.” She added, “I feel better if someone explains something to me as opposed to reading it in a textbook. I respond a lot better to that type of audiovisual interaction.”

“Coaching,” that’s really what it’s all about,” said Pierce. “Some students I encounter had a bad experience with mathematics in the past, so they just avoid math at all costs. The Finance Coach vodcasts makes it a little easier to at least approach the problem and say ‘This isn’t so bad after all. If you can do it on the board I can at least try to solve it in Excel.’”

Podcasts at Penn State

The Podcasts at Penn State program offers a variety of services designed to offer faculty an easy way to produce educational podcasts and distribute them to their students. These services include hands-on training, information on locating equipment to borrow or purchase for producing podcasts, recommendations of the best practices for creating pedagogical podcasts, free software downloads necessary to create podcasts, free accounts to begin posting podcasts, online tutorials, and more. In addition, the Penn State on iTunes U project gives faculty a secure way to publish course podcasts. For more information on how to participate in the program and to begin podcasting to students, visit http://podcasts.psu.edu/ or e-mail podcasts@psu.edu.

Educational Technology Report: Podcasts are another way to enhance courses

Podcasting Small Jamie Oberdick, producer and host of the Podcasts at Penn State show What Works in Educational Technology, recently had the novel experience of producing a podcast about … podcasts. He sat down with Carla Zembal-Saul, associate professor of science education and Chris Millet, manager of advanced learning projects at Penn State, to discuss the Podcasts at Penn State pilot program. This podcast features how Carla used podcasts in her classroom, including a student-produced podcast on the Colony Collapse Disorder, a malady affecting honeybees. This podcast was used in Congressional testimony.

You can hear the podcast at the Podcasts at Penn State site or on Penn State at iTunes U.Â And while there, after being inspired by the What Works podcast, be sure to sign up for the summer Podcasts at Penn State pilot program.

PSU Podcasting in the News

Two pieces of news emerged from PSU on the same day about the Podcasts at Penn State project. The first was an article in the Daily Collegian, the student newspaper on campus, cleverly titled, “Lectures could be available for iPods.” I probably would have said that lectures are available, but I’m not the editor. It is a good piece that represents the project well. It was nice to see that the reported not only got the story from ETS, but also a couple of the faculty we are working with. Always good to hear that voice come through.

The other was in the form of a news story on the local CBS Nightly News last night. I took the bullet for being on-air, but again they did a good job representing the project even if they did focus in on the Apple partnership a little strongly. I guess you go with the coolness factor. Either way it is nice to see a little bit of the work we are doing get some press … next time maybe someone else can be the on air personality … I have more of a face for podcasting. You can view the clip below.

One thing I did notice about both features is how they were very interested in how podcasting could enable students to skip class. We really aren’t seeing that result at the moment, but that is one of the reasons we are still in pilot.