Creators, Participants, and Observers: Podcasting, Blogs, and Clickers Offers Students More than Just a Seat in the Classroom

摘要

Today' students are often passive receivers of media-based instructional materials and rarely have the opportunity to actively participate in their creation. One up-and-coming technology that is compatible with self-directed education is a podcast, which is an audio or video file distributed to an appropriate media player over the Internet. Our students in a multidisciplinary mechanical engineering class were able to go beyond being a consumer and instead became creators of podcasts and active participants through blogs and a classroom response system (clickers). With the use of new technologies and software tools, students were given the opportunity to create and post podcasts of their own research. Because the assignment was optional (students had a choice of writing a paper or creating a podcast on their original research) not all of the students created podcasts. Both types of completed projects (papers and podcasts) were uploaded to the class blog. In class students were actively involved by responding to instructor questions via clickers. In addition, both groups of students were given pre- and post-surveys to ascertain and compare pre-project expectations with post-project assessments of their time commitments, skills needed, level of enjoyment, and perceptions on their learning.