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New College Swindon

Year 3: MyPodLets - distinctive consolidated learning 2009/2010

 

 

Project Description

The structure of the PodLets would comprise up to 30 very short audio or video podcasts giving key points of a given situation. The PodLets are designed as a quick reference for learning but each series will grow with detail. All the data will be available to download to a mobile phone to focus this project on students, most of who are outside of a formal learning environment. The PodLets will be discoverable through metadata searching. This will be used to define the PodLet standard meta-vocabulary. Podlets will be optimised for delivery using hand held mobile devices.

Aims

Mobile technologies will be used to send and receive “PodLets” of learning for a variety of students predominantly in the workplace in specialist circumstances. Each PodLet will last up to 2 minutes and will be “discoverable” by the learner by searchable user-friendly metadata. Podlets will grow into a Podkit which is a series of bite-sized chunks of learning pedagogically produced to a given structure/standard.
The Podkit will include the support materials that can be downloaded if the full suite is required. Podlet production and content designed by students and uploaded through template driven Learner content management system to myPodcast.

Objectives

• Create and implement a project framework for the partners together with workflows for Podlet production and quality control.

• Provide the technical and professional support framework for staff capacity building and project delivery
• If possible, gain a presence on iTunes to increase audience accessibility
• Create and design the delivery templates based around pedagogical theory.
• Implement Dublin Core meta tagging to add to the description of the PodLets to ensure easy searching.
• Use W2 technology to encourage collaboration between the partners, particularly by enabling learners to contribute to content development.
• Enhance the students learning experience for them to produce their own PodLets and personalise the content for sharing within their subject area.
• PodLets can be designed for all areas of education but this project would focus on designed PodLets to be used in the following areas:
a. Special Needs in the Workplace
b. Remote or Specialist workers in exceptional environments
c. Mainstream education for students working in the field or revision packs.
d. Military personnel who are in the field or again in exceptional environments.

• Specialists from each of these areas will be targeted with creating a number of PodLets for a given learning situation. Not all these learning situations need to be academic. i.e. have a qualification aim
o Development and upgrading of myPodcast website to include:
Expansion of the categories of subject areas
o Development for recognition of metadata/metatags to identify specific content (Dublin Core)
o Development of templates and documentation to support the production and description of Podlets of learning “Podlet Podkits”
o Development to allow user comments to be uploaded to “rate” or enhance the Podlet.
o Development to allow user’s contributions to PodLets to be uploaded with metadata already embedded from mobile phone access to upload template within MyPodcast.
• Measure, record and potentially improve engagement, attendance, retention and achievement of project participants.

• Disseminate and present of the Podlet initiative to the wider community through conferences and raising awareness once again of MyPodcast website throughout the MoLeNET community

Target audience:

Apprenticeships and Work based learners will be the main emphasis of the project as we wish to concentrate on study outside of the normal learning environment using mobile technology. Students with learning difficulties will be included and specialist PodLets will be created for life skills and basic skills to support these students. With using the PodLets with 16-19 students, the project will look at how PodLets support students in the field giving instruction and assistance during learning on trips. The military initiative will be somewhat a stand-alone study with the unique circumstances of the troops in the field.

Partners

City of Bristol College, Shaw Trust and Royal Artillery

Year 1: MyPodcast – developing Innovative approaches to personalised learning 2007/2008

 

 

 

A consortium of four colleges in the further education (FE) sector introduced audio and video podcasts to approximately 350 learners across a range of subjects and distributed them to their mobile devices including Apple iPods and ASUS eee PCs. Using a combination of questionnaires delivered to learners and focus group interviews with learners and their ‘m-champion’ lecturers, this project investigated whether or not podcasting affects the motivation of learners and whether there is a link between students’ learning styles and their creation and use of podcasts. It also examined the ‘affordances’ of iPods and ASUS eee PCs using the students’ own experiences of these mobile technologies.

Although learners were non-committal about any link between motivation, learning styles and podcasting before the project started, for the learners actually involved in creating podcasts and watching or listening to them on their mobile devices there was a clear link with motivational attributes such as subject engagement and creativity as well as their preferred learning styles. Learners demonstrated a knowledge and awareness of both the enabling and constraining aspects of the mobile devices they were provided with on the project.

College and Project Background

The MyPodcast project Consortium has four partners: New College, Swindon (lead partner), Cirencester College, Swindon College and Wiltshire College. Cirencester College is a sixth form college, the other three are general FE colleges, although more than 70% of New College’s business supports sixth-form students.

The Consortium serves a population that is mainly rural but with significant clusters in a few key towns that provide high levels of employment in a variety of industries including: financial services and banking, food and car manufacturing, retail and tourism. The armed forces are also a major employer and present a particular set of challenges to the local training providers.

The colleges in the Consortium are the main providers in its catchment areas which collectively cover Wiltshire and Swindon, south west Oxfordshire and South East Gloucestershire. The partners deliver a wide range of educational opportunities within all four learning routes for 14–19 year olds, and for adults through to higher education.

As a form of mobile learning enabling ‘24/7’ access to learning resources, podcasting – the automated delivery of video and audio content over the internet using RSS feeds – is gaining popularity in schools, colleges and universities as educators tap into its potential for enhancing creativity, collaboration, information literacy and learner autonomy (King and Gura 2007; Lankshear and Knobel 2006; Lee et. al. 2007). However, despite adherents claiming a wide range of pedagogical benefits there is currently a lack of systematic research into how the process of listening to, watching and creating podcasts affects  the concrete experiences and learning outcomes of students. This is particularly the case in the UK FE system where research has focused on the implementation of technologies such as interactive whiteboards and virtual learning environments (Finlayson et al 2006), other mobile technologies (Savill-Smith C et al. 2006) or broader issues of ICT infrastructure and access to ICT at home and college (BECTA, 2007a; 2007b).  Furthermore, there are few central resource banks for educational podcasts that have been created specifically for the UK FE market.

The broad aim of this project was to create a central repository of audio and visual educational podcasts (created by students and teachers) across a range of subject areas and levels, which was to be hosted on a website and accessed, initially by learners and staff in their respective colleges, and subsequently by learners in the wider FE sector. It is hoped that the website can be sustained over a long period of time given the appropriate resources.

Project aims

All of the colleges that form part of the Consortium partners are to appoint lecturers/managers in specified curriculum areas.  These lecturers will be trained to produce a set of high quality video or audio podcasts in their subject to support learners.  Learners in these curriculum areas will be guided how to produce podcasts to show evidence of their learning

The Lead Partner will create a website which will be designed to house these podcasts. It will be designed in an organised and structured way for users to be able to find the relevant podcasts that they are searching for.

The end result of the project will be the completion of the website.  The podcasts that have been completed in each of the subject areas will contribute to the content of the website. It is the intention that this website will eventually be accessed by the national FE sector.

Key objectives

• Create a full project management framework to guide the four partners
• Provide the technical and professional support framework through the appointment of dedicated IT technicians
• Arrange high quality staff training with excellent support guides. Professional staff training in using a variety of mobile media technology to include project focus technology
• Lead partner to create and maintain a website to house the podcasts
• The website designer will join the team to monitor the quality of podcasts
• Create, develop and manage a central source of podcasts on-line
• Create audio and video podcasts to show good practice
• Show examples of good practice by embedding technology into teaching practice.

Benefits for participants

Benefits for learners, across all learner groups

Students have gained:

• access to resources on mobile device any time and anywhere
• alternative revision methods used by students
• revision resources available (own-paced)
• repetition and teinforcement activities for learning as part of production process
• tecognition of achievement and sharing of expertise
• increased focus by others on their activities and, hence, impacts on motivation and behaviour
• enjoyment of personalised miniaturised, sophisticated devices
• the opportunity to collaborate with other learners from outside of own course (inter-professional workshops)
• encouraged team/group work within the classroom
• alternative teaching method that engaged students with positive feedback.

Benefits for staff:

Staff have gained:

• more creativity from staff producing podcasts
• magnification and subsequent enlargement of specific item detail
• great learning curve for staff with positive outcomes
• engagement of learners with new technology
• increased motivation and enthusiasm from all learners
• able to gather useful evidence on field trips
• capture of external speakers’ input
• re-usable/shareable resource
• additional method for blended learning.

Benefits for the lead college:

• Deployment of state-of-the-art technology for use college-wide
• Success of cross-college collaboration amongst teams
• Sharing of good practice throughout the m-champs

Benefits for institutions taking part (partners and colleges):

• Opportunity for concrete cross-college collaboration
• Project focus for development
• Sharing of expertise between partners and from LSN activities
• A degree of benchmarking against innovative practice
• Improved capital resourcing for each partner
• Staff development opportunities.

Lessons learned

• Ensure that teachers are confident with using the equipment or have suitable support in the classroom
• Staff should have allocated some time to test equipment before use.  There were a few lessons that had to be deferred because the equipment was unable to link into the network.
• Contextualising and categorising the podcasts were important so that the content could be used in a number of curriculum areas.
• Clear instructions for planning podcast production are required. Students who were involved with creating podcasts needed guidance on how to prepare the script for recording. It would be advisable to produce a guide on how to prepare for recording a podcast. The preparation was time consuming which delayed the recording of some podcasts.
• Part of the preparation was that students were recommended to write scripts and practice the podcast before the final recording.
• Reinforce the view that learner needs and learning preferences are not homogenous courses, between levels, or reflective of age, gender, etc.
• Awareness of time required for production of podcasts.
• Quality of podcasts can be varied and still be effective.