The Observer Effect in Podcasting

The Observer Effect or Reactivity refers to the phenomenon that occurs when individuals alter their behavior because of an awareness that they are being observed. Having undertaken a number of sessions where I have recorded my lecturers, it is becoming clear to me that a similar phenomenon is occuring to me and to my classes when I record the sessions.

The physical and visable presence of the microphones in the classrooms are effecting the way the students, and the way I, behave in the class sessions.

I have tried a variety of recording devices, I started off with a regular headphones and microphone combination. This made very clear recordings but changed the focus of the lectures from the interaction in classes to the recording process, the focus became the tip of the microphone as opposed to the class interaction. Students behaved differently when they saw things were being recorded, they were quiter. I also think they felt like they were no longer to focus of the classes.



An alternative I tried was a dictaphone, which I tried twice but found that the quality of the recordings was poor, the speech was very indistinct.



I moved onto a tie clip microphone, this also resulted in poor quality recordings.



So now I've ordered an omnidirectional microphone in hopes of using a device that will not interfere with the teaching process.

Rapid Prototyping

As part of this project we agreed to start with a rapid prototyping process whereby we would create some audio podcasts that would be immediately of use to our students and get some feedback quickly.

As a number of our Masters student undertake the research part of their dissertations over the summer, and typically use a mixed methods apporach to the evaluation of their thesis, at the start of the summer a podcast was designed to help in this process. After a few false starts we created a 55 minute podcast concerning the use of interviews for qualitative research.

To do this we undertook research on useful audio recording tools, and finally selected a free, cross-platform sound editor called "Audacity" available at http://audacity.sourceforge.net/.

We wrote a number of drafts of a script that would communicate the key points concerning interviews for qualitative research, finally we recorded and edited the podcast.

Once the podcast was completed we realised that 55 minutes was too long and we needed to break it up into smaller parts. So we edited it as best we could to divide it down into three different parts, but we realised it would be necessary to re-script and re-record substantial parts of the podcasts to make each part stand-alone but also help contribute to an overall understanding of interviews.

The three parts in the final assembly are;

1. An Introduction to Interviews (16 Minutes)
2. Analysis of Interviews (14 Minutes)
3. Interview FAQs (8.5 Minutes)
   

This recordings were put up on a webpage with additional supporting materials of including; powerpoints, links, and a fun Youtube video of "Yes, Minister", all available at;
http://www.comp.dit.ie/dgordon/Podcasts/Interviews.html

The students undertaking research over the summer were informed out there podcasts, and several used them and gave us positive feedback, and asked for more such recordings.

Following this we put the podcasts up on Pod-O-Matic which is one of the most commonly used repositories for Podcasts. We have had about 25 unique visitors who have listened to the podcasts, and hope that this number will grow as time goes on;
http://ditschoolofcomputing.podomatic.com/

Welcome!

This blog will be used in support of a Teaching and Learning Fellowship project in the Dublin Institute of Technology (DIT):

"An Examination of the Use of Blended Learning to Support Improvement of Engagement and Retention of Part-time Postgraduate Level Students using Student Edited Podcasts"

A bit of a mouthful so hopefully what follows will provide a better description.

Firstly some background. The project will be carried out by Deirdre Lawless and Damian Gordon from the School of Computing in the Faculty of Science, DIT supported by Vincent O'Farrell and Claudia Igbrude from the Learning, Teaching and Technology Centre of the DIT.

The audience of the project will be part-time taught postgraduate students in the School of Computing. Part-time students must contend with a large number of logistical factors which may inhibit their ability to attend all required instruction sessions. The vast majority or students are in full-time employment and due to either family or work commitments may be unable to attend all classes. This can have a significant impact on the student learning experience. Students can quickly fall behind, become de-motivated and can increasingly seek deferrals from either examinations or the programme itself.

This project will investigate how a “Blended Learning” approach, combining traditional and online delivery, and specifically, the use of podcasting could be used to address some of the problems encountered. Teaching material and classroom sessions for selected core modules on two MSc programmes in the school of computing will be recorded and made available as podcasts. Students will be encouraged to annotate these podcasts and to develop companion podcasts which will support the transfer of knowledge between their classmates and will form the basis of a repository accessible to future cohorts.

The progress of the project will be recorded regularly on this blog.

We are looking forward to getting really started to with the project and hope to get some positive results to report soon.

Deirdre & Damian