Was it Pod Worthy?: A Preparatory Plan for Evaluating Podcasting in Higher Education

Students and teaching staff in higher education are constantly looking for new tools to help them study and teach more efficiently. The University of Canterbury began ProjectPodcast to introduce podcasting to a number of subjects as an add-on to the current course curriculum. Podcasting is being used to enhance mobile learning and enthuse both students and lecturers. Previous podcasting evaluations show that there exists a need for both audio content from lectures, or so called “LectureCasts” as well as supplementary material or “Sup!Casts”. In this study, we will be evaluating ProjectPodcast. The evaluation is aimed at both the student population as well as the lecturing staff in order to gain knowledge about their impressions of podcasting. Prior podcasting surveys have received low response rates, due to the choice of time, location and medium. Hence, our evaluation plan has been created with the goalof encouraging feedback from students and lecturers. In this paper we presentour preparatory plan for evaluating ProjectPodcast.