Podcasting computer science E-1

  • Authors:

  • David J. Malan

  • Affiliations:

  • Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts

  • Venue:
  • Proceedings of the 38th SIGCSE technical symposium on Computer science education
  • Year:
  • 2007

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Abstract

In recent months have teachers become publishers of content and students subscribers thereof by way of podcasts, feeds of audio, video, and other content that can be downloaded to clients like iTunes and devices like iPods. In the fall of 2005, we ourselves began to podcast Harvard Extension School's Computer Science E-1 in both audio and video formats, the first course within Harvard University to do so. Our goals were to provide students with more portable access to educational content and to involve them in technology itself.To evaluate this experiment, we have analyzed logs and surveys of students. We find that our students valued E-1's podcast more as a vehicle for review (45%) than as an alternative to attendance (18%). We also find that most students (71%) tended to listen to or watch lectures on their computers, with far fewer relying upon audio-only (19%) or video (10%) iPods. We argue, meanwhile, that podcasting, despite its widespread popularity, is but a marginal improvement on trends long in progress. It is this technology's reach that we claim is significant, not the technology itself. Logs suggest that E-1's own podcast, available not only to students but to the public at large, has acquired (as of September 2006) between 6,000 and 10,000 subscribers from over 50 countries. We argue, then, that podcasting offers to extend universities' educational reach more than it offers to improve education itself.