By Mimi Leonard
from Inquiry, Volume 13, Number 1, Spring 2008, 20-25
© Copyright 2008 Virginia Community College System
Abstract
In 2005,
Wytheville Community College developed a Quality Enhancement Plan to
emphasize student speaking and listening competencies. This article suggests
that podcasting is a promising instructional technique to build oral skills
and to enliven teaching and learning.
As
a community-college instructor of developmental English, I had never thought
much about my students’ speaking and listening skills.
My teaching priorities are focused on instilling good print literacy
habits during a semester.
Nevertheless, I have begun thinking that there is a place for developing oral
competencies in my classroom.
In the fall of 2005, my
institution underwent a Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS)
re-accreditation process that required teaching faculty to develop a Quality
Enhancement Plan (QEP) addressing genuine student-learning needs.
As we thought about our options, we were drawn to the area of soft
skills. Faculty recognized that our
graduates will be working in a new, often international service economy and
believed that we needed to focus our QEP on improving student employability.
Our most popular programs
are in the healthcare fields. On any
given day, graduates of these programs talk to patients, physicians,
pharmaceutical representatives, and hospital executives.
New and anticipated workplaces in our area include a Fortune 500 company,
a customer call-in support center for satellite radio, and a medium security
prison. Working in such environments
necessitates more than an associate’s degree; it requires interacting with
people from a variety of ethnic backgrounds and speaking accurately and clearly.
Hence, the teaching faculty narrowed our
QEP focus from soft skills in general to the particularized skill of how well
our students are able to communicate interpersonally.
Once SACS approved our
Learning to Communicate QEP proposal, developing these
oral-communication competencies became an institutional priority.
The three QEP objectives state that students shall “interact effectively
and appropriately in an interpersonal context,” “construct and deliver an
extended message,” and “listen effectively and appropriately” (2005, p. 21-22).
Five specific outcomes are associated
with each learning objective, so each can be addressed in a variety of ways.
Altering my methodologies by developing
new practice activities and homework assignments is one way I could contribute
toward our collegiate goal without diminishing developmental English
instructional priorities.
I began to think seriously
about addressing the QEP goals by using technology while taking a course in
pedagogy and instructional design.
The professor required us to review freeware or shareware (software that is
available at no cost), reasoning that budget constraints are a reality but need
not hinder classroom activities. He
urged us to ground our explorations in our teaching situations, so I was drawn
to find a computer application that linked composition to orality.
From PCs to Podcasting
DeVoss, Johansen, Selfe,
and Williams (2003) developed a piece on computer- mediated composition and
concluded that educators must not “ignore, exclude or devalue new-media texts,”
lest we “run the risk of our curriculum holding declining relevance for students
who are communicating in increasingly expansive, networked environments” (p.
169-170). Their work reminded me of
how important it is to meet students where they are.
Bull (2005) was even more specific about which technology to incorporate
when he endorsed podcasting in education and in English education specifically.
He wrote:
Janet Swenson, past
president of the National Council of Teachers of English Conference on English
Education, recently joined her colleagues at a retreat to consider the future of
English education in light of technological advances.
She observes that the use of the term
writing to encompass multimodal
compositions such as digital storytelling and podcasting is now “essentially
uncontested” within her discipline. (p. 25)
These insights assured me that I could link developmental English assignments to
our QEP priorities, using podcasting as a bridge.
What Is Podcasting?
Podcasting is “an
automated technology that allows listeners to subscribe to and listen to
digitally recorded audio shows” (Flanagan & Calandra, 2005, p. 20).
It is similar to TiVO in that the audience chooses what to hear and when;
it is dissimilar in that TiVO doesn’t allow the subscriber to create his or her
own broadcast and upload that content.
I learned that through
podcasting students could make and post a spoken assignment using the
microphones and personal computers that are readily available on campus.
A learner could likewise listen to content that the instructor uploaded.
Either activity has a direct correspondence to our QEP learning outcomes.
Podcasting is not brand
new to higher education. This
technology has been used successfully at a number of colleges.
According to The Chronicle of
Higher Education, these included American University, Drexel University,
Purdue University, St. Mary’s College, Texas A&M, the University of Houston, and
the University of Texas (Read, 2005).
Duke University issued iPods to matriculating freshmen in August 2004,
determining that academic uses fell into five areas:
·
course content dissemination,
·
classroom recording,
·
field recording,
·
study support, and
·
file storage and transfer (Belanger, 2005).
The University of Missouri identified other academic uses, including campus-news
broadcasting and development of student recruiting materials (Meng, 2005).
Jackson, a professor at American University, likes using podcasting not
only because of what he calls its “hip factor,” but also because “sending
lectures or clips from other sources to students via the Internet allows him to
devote more class time to informed discussions, readings, and one-on-one student
assistance” (as cited in Marselas, 2005, p. 3).
Possibilities
The textbook used for
developmental reading includes a section on pronunciation keys.
To practice and reinforce that content, students could create a podcast
since one QEP objective is to “demonstrate the ability to use pronunciation that
is understood by others” (2005, p. 23). Making a podcast also is a compelling
option because many students lack confidence in their speaking abilities and
dread standing up in front of an audience.
Like radio broadcasters, podcasters are invisible to their listeners.
To reinforce the objective of “demonstrate the ability to understand a
person’s suggestions for improving one’s abilities, being able to transfer them
beyond the current situation” (2005, p. 25), I
could post graded-assignment commentaries by the same means.
Other podcasting activity
ideas come from the English as a Second Language (ESL) discipline. I was
interested to read Boyle (1993), who affirmed the QEP philosophy when she noted,
“in learning situations where the opportunities for oral practice are much fewer
than for listening, more attention should be given in teaching to exercises that
can also serve as springboards for oral practice” (p.36).
She created audiotapes for her students in Hong Kong and then used them
for interviews, transcriptions, cloze (fill-in-the-blank), and shadow-reading
exercises. A similar activity could
be done with podcasts, perhaps as a spelling exercise.
TalkShoe
Though the college
administration would need to approve the installation of podcasting software,
expense would not necessarily be a barrier because there is freeware that allows
individuals to create and share podcasts.
As part of my graduate class, I reviewed TalkShoe, a program that permits
public or private podcasts. This
software allows anyone with an internet connection and a telephone to host and
moderate an interactive podcast and generates a unique identifier that allows
the content to be heard by the public or a host-defined private audience.
Podcasting Pitfalls
Podcasting is not without
its challenges. The most obvious in
my instructional situation is that the activities I have proposed do not require
direct interaction with others.
While it might be a good way to build speaking and listening skills, podcasting
cannot substitute for face-to-face interactions if we are to meet our QEP
objectives. If podcasting were to be
used extensively, it might in fact undermine QEP objectives because of its
solitary nature.
Other concerns are the
nature of our student body and rural location.
Many of our students work full time and attend school part time.
A significant number do not have personal computers at home, and the
rural infrastructure means that dial-up internet access is the norm whereas
up-to-date hardware and robust internet access are recommended for podcasters.
While the college does provide public-access computers, they are in an
open-laboratory setting, which presents other issues.
First, the student would have to get to the resource center during
regular hours, which could conflict with family and work schedules.
Secondly, the recording quality would almost certainly be negatively
affected by ambient noise in the lab.
Finally, other students could distract or interrupt the podcaster.
Because of ongoing campus renovations and growth in enrollment, it would
be difficult to create a private dedicated podcasting space at this time.
Final Thoughts
References
Anderson, L. (2007).
TalkShoe reviewed.
Podcast User Magazine, 12.
Retrieved February 16, 2007 from
http://www.podcastusermagazine.com/files/podusermag-issue12.pdf
Belanger, Y. (June 2005). Duke
University iPod First Year Experience Final Report.
Center for Instructional Technology, Duke University.
Retrieved February
23, 2007 from
http://cit.duke.edu/pdf/ipod_initiative_04_05.pdf
Bull, G. (2005).
Podcasting and the long tail [Electronic version].
Learning
and leading with technology, 4,
24-25.
DeVoss, D., Johansen, J,
Selfe, C, & Williams, Jr., J.
(2003). Under the radar of composition programs: Glimpsing the future through case studies of
literacy in
Flanagan, B. & Calandra, B.
Podcasting in the classroom [Electronic version].
Learning
Learning to communicate: The quality enhancement plan for Wytheville Community College.
(August 2005).
Wytheville, VA.
Marselas, K. (2005, December 3).
Community college experimenting with ‘podcasting’
[Electronic version].
The Capital.
Retrieved February 16, 2007 from
http://www.hometownannapolis.com/cgi-bin/read/2005/12_03-24/TOP
Meng, P. (2005).
Podcasting and vodcasting: A white paper.
University of Missouri IAT
Services.
Retrieved February 16,
2007 from
http://edmarketing.apple.com/adcinstitute/wpcontent/Missouri_Podcasting_White_Paper.pdf
Read, B. (2005).
Lectures on the go: As more colleges use ‘coursecasting,’
Schneider, R. (2006).
The attack of the pod people: University courses to be podcasted
Shropshire, C. (2006, June 20).
All talk, all the time: New local Web site lets
Mimi (mē-mē) Leonard (len-êrd) is an English doctoral student at Old Dominion University and teaches developmental studies at Wytheville (with-vil) Community College. Her research interests include adult multiple intelligences, oral communication, and teaching technologies.