I'm beginning to think that we've got this business of Lecturing + Homework all upside down. In previous postings, I’ve shared some examples and thoughts about recording lectures - “Surprising Consequences” (Oct 06) & “From Lectures to Learning Objects” (July 06). I am intrigued that the practice is increasing, and I’m very excited that we’re beginning to hear some early results on how this impacts student learning. Is the practice of recording lectures and using them as pre-reading turning things right side up?

The latest example came from a posting by Laura Blankenship (feb 8, 2007) on the Academic Commons blog sponsored by the Center of Inquiry in Liberal Arts at Wabash College. She reports:

Three Bryn Mawr professors in the sciences began experimenting with podcasting last year… Michelle Francl began podcasting in the Fall of 2005 ….Now that she has made an initial collection of lectures for this class, she hopes to assign the lectures to be listened to before class. She explained her reason for this as purely pedagogical: "I used to do the easy case in class and then send the students home to work on the hard case. That's just the opposite of what you should do. Now they can listen to the easy case before class and we can work in class on the hard case."

In addition to the positive response she received from students, Francl also received recognition from outside Bryn Mawr College. She had created a course blog on which she posted the link to her podcasts and which enabled her to generate the RSS feed that allows for automatic distribution of new files (see box above). She also submitted that feed to iTunes and, after a few weeks, found herself in the top ten educational podcasts. She received email from several of her "fans," who were students without access to higher education, retired professors keeping up with the field, and students who were supplementing their studies at other institutions with her lectures. She was thrilled to see that there was an audience beyond her classroom for her work.

The implications are fascinating, as it opens up new questions. It makes me want to unpack the REASONS that student feedback was so positive, and raises the age-old question, “If they like it better, do they learn better?” I suspect in this case, the answer would be yes, as it changed what she was able to cover during the in-class discussions. But is anyone studying this in more detail?

It also points out the value of the content that professors own – and the missed opportunity when fantastic expositors go un-recorded, and their voice and style is lost with their passing.

If you know of other examples of how educators are using recorded lectures as “pre-reading”, please post a comment and let us know if you think the practice is a passing fad or a breakthrough of significance…

I look forward to hearing from you!