Technologies Used: Digital voice recorder, audio cassette tapes, audio CDs, DVDs, Podcasting
Author: Ms Rosamund Winter
Description of Activity
Workshops / seminars conducted on campus are audio recorded, or video recorded if there is important visual information that cannot be captured simply in a PowerPoint presentation, for example: Off campus students are sent audio cassettes, audio CDs or DVDs of these sessions. In this way, they can experience vicariously the discussion of course content by their on campus colleagues.
The format will depend on the equipment available for recording at the time, and/or the players students have at home, or even in their cars, and are independent of computers or internet access or speed. Many of the teaching rooms, particularly the small seminar rooms where discussions take place, are not set up for “Monash Lectures On Line”, but it is a simple matter to audio record the proceedings. (As many seminars are 2 to 3 hours in length, editing significant (short) sections for podcasts and video to upload to Blackboard is another use of the same material.)
Pedagogy
Students off campus can feel very detached and isolated, and although participation in a group happens through online discussion forums, for example, it is difficult to replicate tones of voice, spontaneous musings, argument, laughter, and so on. It has been my experience that some people find the Blackboard environment quite alienating, and so other forms of communication make a big difference.
Giving students the opportunity to hear, or see, the others in their group makes it easier for them to interact with people online, as they feel to some extent that they already know them. It engenders a sense of community, allowing that bouncing off other people’s ideas that face to face contact does so well, and asynchronously. Students can listen / watch in their own time, all or part of the sessions.
To cite this article please use the following:
Winter, R. (2009). Distributing Recorded Content To Off-campus Students. In M.Henderson & A.Fernando (Eds) Online Teaching Centre. Faculty of Education: Monash University.
