Study of Student-Generated Podcasts

The Educational Value of Student Generated Podcasts

Nie, M., Cashmore, A., & Cane, C. (2008) The educational value of student generated podcasts. Paper, ALT-C 2008 Research Proceedings pp. 15-26.

This article reports on a study of using student-created podcasts developed by a group of medical students. The study showed that “podcasting can empower learners and help them become more active and independent learners, and how student-developed podcasts can promote engagement and motivation for learning, improve cognitive learning and develop transferable team-working skills among student producers.” (p.15)

Student-generated podcasts help students learn through reflection and analyzing ideas and expressing these ideas in a professional oral presentation. If worked in teams, podcasting offers the potential for collaborative learning, and shared ownership of ideas and reflection.

Students in this study found that student-generated podcasts as a means to disseminate and generate knowledge. Podcasts enhanced their understanding of the topic. Because the students needed to research their topic in order to produce the podcast, their knowledge was expanded on the chosen topic and new information linked to their previous knowledge. As the podcast would be published, students felt pushed to do more research, especially current research. The research required them to link more of their knowledge and to disseminate the information so that non specialists would understand the content. Students also found podcast creation, motivating, interesting, and were appreciative of learning a new technical skill.

In addition, the learners who listened to the podcasts, were interested in the podcasts generated by their peers, found the podcasts engaging and motivating, and expressed interest in listening to peer instruction for more of their coursework.