As students walk around campus with iPods peeking out of their pocket, it could be more than music they are listening to as the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee develops the technology to podcast course material.

Podcasting is a way of distributing audio or video files over the Internet for playback on mobile devices or personal computers. Under a $53,000 curricular redesign grant from a combination of the UW System, three universities, UWM, UW-Whitewater and the UW Colleges, the pilot project will explore the different ways podcasting can be used in courses as a teaching tool.

There are currently eight UWM faculty members involved in the project, with three professors already podcasting lectures and five working on material that will compliment their courses.

The complimentary content includes the foreign language department creating oral flashcards for students to practice vocabulary words and the Clinical Lab Sciences department in the College of Health Sciences filming short instructional videos demonstrating how to use lab equipment

Even without an iPod or MP3 player, students will be able to access the files on a computer or download them to their player using iTunesU, a free service for colleges and universities that provides access to students’ educational content at all times.

Robert Kaleta, director of the UWM Learning Technology Center, said they are also working on making podcasts available through Desire to Learn (D2L). Students will only have to click on their courses to access the files and view them online.

“It makes learning more portable,” Kaleta said.

The University of Wisconsin-Madison started their podcasting program in January and faculty continue to be excited about the new technology. UW started as one of six schools in a pilot program to test the podcasting technology. Now there are more than 300 universities taking part in the new technology, including UWM.

“It was awesome,” said Kevin Strang, a UW physiology professor, about his experience working with iTunesU for his summer course with 100 students. Strang tape-recorded every lecture and puts it on iTunesU, where students could listen to the lectures anywhere they went.

Now with a class of 500 students and cold-and-flu season coming up, Strang said he knows the podcasted lectures will be useful.

“Any given day someone is going to miss [class],” Strang said.

There are pros and cons to the new technology, one UWM student pointed out.

“If you can’t take notes fast enough, just download the whole lecture and just listen to it,” said senior Tony Li.

At the same time, Li said it could affect attendance. “If you podcast, I don’t think anyone would go to class.”

Amy Mangrich, the Instructional Design Consultant at the Learning Technology Center working with the podcasting pilot project’s implementation, said, in general, studies suggest that putting materials such as PowerPoint presentations and podcasted lectures online has not significantly affected attendance, and some studies suggest it may actually increase attendance.

“As part of the pilot project, we are exploring ways that non-lecture podcasting material can be used to complement traditional coursework and assist in student learning and retention of the material,” Mangrich said.

UWM’s Learning Technology Center will assist faculty as they implement more podcasts in the spring semester with students possibly doing assignments where they self-produce media that could be podcasted — language students recording interviews with native speakers, for example.

“Technology is changing,” Strang said. “If we get them to use those toys they have to continue learning, everyone is winning.”

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