Podcasts and student learning in the humanities

William Bowden: “The use of podcasts (downloadable audio files) is becoming increasingly common in higher education. At Nottingham members of staff are increasingly using them to make elements of their teaching available to students via WebCT. “Thus far, with a single exception, the use of podcasts has not been adopted by staff members in the …

Demonstrating practical skills to large groups using an overhead visualiser

Video >> Sarah Freeman: “We start almost all of our practical classes off with some sort of demonstration showing the students where they’re supposed to be looking at things, what they’re supposed to be doing, and then allow them to go and spend the time working, working it out for themselves.” Sarah demonstrating with the …

Giving feedback on practical sessions via a podcast

Video >> Sarah Westwater-Wood: “In the Therapeutics Studies module I teach three groups the same thing every week and they’re two hour long lectures and it’s quite intensive delivery of manual skills and underpinning knowledge. When I finish the week’s practical sessions I realise that there are common things that I want to feed back …

Video overviews of specialist software for students new to biological databases

Sally Chappell, Paddy Tighe: “One of the modules I convene on the MSc in Immunology and Allergy is a bio-informatics module where we want the students to get familiar with a lot of online resources. We use a lot of software that’s really quite complex, so anything that we can do to remind them of …

Making a podcast of a lecture: recording and uploading to WebCT

Video >> Andrew: “This is the podcasting kit we use in lectures. It’s pretty bulky. This is what I just picked up from the learning and teaching resource and support people. This is the main kit and these are just the wires to plug it in, which I’ll do. “So that’s plugged in and on. …

Video demonstrations of common laboratory techniques address student diversity and limited lab time

Sally Chappell and Paddy Tighe: “When people start the MSc in Molecular Diagnostics they come with quite varied levels of experience. Some of our students have been working in industry or a related area for maybe a year or two years, so they’re quite comfortable with lab techniques, whilst others come straight from a degree …

ePioneers project: vodcasting – videoing lectures

Video >> Rolf Wiesemes: “I guess I was thinking about video podcasting and podcasting before the ePioneers project started, and I – at some point just before that, I was looking at the website of some American Universities, MIT and Harvard in particular, I think, where quite a few of their teaching materials and talks, …

ePioneers project: podcasting – recording conversations

Video >> Richard Pemberton: “We wanted to give them some sort of extra input, in addition to the classroom input, that they could – could act as a, kind of, supplement, but was not delivered in the same format. “So we didn’t just want to, sort of, record, like, a lecture, and then they would …

Trigger exams: assessing decision making

Video >> Paul Crawford: “And we have innovative assessments, such as the DVD trigger examination, which I introduced with colleagues a year ago, and is evaluated really well. “If we’re going to assess students on their health communication, that’s not easy to do. You can’t really do that very easily within a school setting. So …

Introducing podcasting and WebCT: implications for dyslexic students

Video >> Richard: “It’s the second year of Biogeography teaching that I’ve been doing now for 6 years, and the lectures, like most lectures, they change a bit. But the core of them stays much the same, and to be quite frank I was getting a little bit bored of saying the same sorts of …