Educational Technology for Healthcare Education
Educational Technology for Healthcare Education
University staff can now 'podcast' lectures, seminars, talks, or indeed anything that involves them speaking. Although the term 'podcast' is derived from Apple's famous iPod (see the Wikipedia podcast entry), it's come to mean the combination of:
That is, an audio clip is placed online, then it's availability is broadcast to interested recipients. The practical steps involved are:
These steps are explored in more detail below.
The first step in podcasting your lecture is, of course, to record it. Information Services provides 'podcasting kits', which comprise a digital audio recorder, lapel microphone, headphones, and USB lead. Each School centre outside Nottingham has a kit which any member of staff can borrow. To book a podcasting kit, please email:
snmp-av-support@nottingham.ac.uk (nt-snmp-av-support internally using Outlook)
specifying which centre you want to book it from - this is important so that IS staff don't have to guess which centre you're emailing from. Staff in Nottingham should book the kit hosted in D137 in the Medical School by emailing Medical School Teaching Support or phoning them on extension 30559/30560. Kits can also be borrowed from various sites on the University Park Campus - see the IS podcasting page for contact details.
Each kit is maintained by local IS staff, and comes with a very simple How To guide which you should read before use. If you're new to podcasting and recording, you should have a 'dry run' before the lecture you intend to record to get a feel for the kit, and to check on audio quality.
Each recorder is capable of recording some 36 hours of voice in MP3 format, which it stores on a flash memory card, from which recordings can be transferred to a PC via USB. Once you've recorded your lectures, transfer them to a PC or Mac, after which you'll need to edit them with audio editing software. The IS Learning Team recommends using the free, Open Source, and highly-featured Audacity, which you can either install from the Novell Applications Launcher (NAL), in the Software Installation section, or download from the Audacity website. Audacity is available for PC, Mac and Linux.
NB: Audacity, for patent reasons, can't directly export MP3 files - you have to download a separate MP3 encoder file known as LAME and place that on your machine - see the Audacity FAQ for details and links to the LAME downloads for Windows and Mac. For this reason, you're recommended to install Audacity via the University Novell Applications Launcher (NAL) as this has the MP3 encoder bundled.
Other editors you could use are:
As an hour-long lecture could result in a MP3 file of some 40Mb, your students will thank you for editing it into smaller chunks, if you can. You can set 'ID3 metadata' in the MP3 file with title and 'artist', which should appear in student MP3 players or iPods - see Project | Edit ID3 Tags in Audacity.
Once your edited MP3 files are ready, you need to upload them to the university's 'streaming server', which allows the audio clips to be served whilst they're downloading, rather than the student having to wait for the full file to download. Currently, you need to do this within WebCT. As a staff member, you should be part of the course entitled "Information Services - WebCT for University of Nottingham Staff", which contains a podcasting uploader tool which allows you to upload MP3 files from your local machine to the 'Wirksworth' streaming server.
Tip 1: avoid using the + and & characters in the names of files to go online, as these have special meanings in URLs and could have unpredictable results if uploaded. So avoid filenames like this&that.mp3 or that+and+the+other.mp3.
Tip 2: the podcast uploader has a filesize limit of 50Mb, so you'll need to split up any full lectures that go over that limit.
Once you've uploaded your files to Wirksworth, you can publicise the web link to your students. You get the weblink from the podcast uploader tool, and each MP3 file has a unique URL of the form:
mms://wirksworthii.nottingham.ac.uk/Podcasts/files/549917/pharmacokinetics1_1.mp3
If you copy such a URL into your browser, it will likely start up a media application, such as Windows Media Player or Real Player or similar, which will try to connect to the Wirksworth server and request the audio stream. Although you upload within WebCT, files on Wirksworth are available to anyone on the WWW, so you can publicise the URLs even to students and end-users without WebCT accounts.
URLs starting with mms: (Multimedia Streaming) are specifically for streaming audio/video and don't allow you to download the file. If you want to make your file available for students to download, copy the mms: link but change the 'protocol' to http, eg:
http://wirksworthii.nottingham.ac.uk/Podcasts/files/549917/pharmacokinetics1_1.mp3
Your students can then right-click on this link in their browser and save the link target (ie the audio file) to their MP3 player or local disk.
If students are using Microsoft Internet Explorer to access WebCT, they should be able to download podcast files with a right-click. Those students using the Mozilla Firefox browser will find that this method doesn't work because of the script-driven nature of the environment, and instead they'll need to use a 'kludge'. Details at the end of this document.
Strictly speaking, the university's podcasting service isn't podcasting as it doesn't do any casting, as the uploaded audio files aren't linked to a RSS newsfeed which students can subscribe to with their iPods or PCs. However, the current service does reduce technical hurdles to recording and publishing audio files on the web, and the IS Learning Team is looking into various means of distribution, including RSS.
If you've any queries on podcasting, contact the IS Learning Team (IS-Learning-Team via internal email, or add @nottingham.ac.uk from outside). A pioneer of podcasting in the University is Nick Mount in Geography, who may be willing to answer queries about how he's used it with his students, and how they've taken to it. In the School of Nursing, Jo Lymn podcasts Pharmacology lectures via WebCT to students on the LBR course "Non-Medical Prescribing".
Podcasting is being increasingly used in educational contexts in a wide range of subject areas. Podcasts created by University of Nottingham staff are listed on the UoN Podcasts page, and below are a few examples of educational podcasts created outside UoN:
Podcasts can be made available in two formats: streamed and downloadable. A streamed file can't be saved to disc as it comes as a continuous data stream from the streaming server, and you have to be at the computer in order to listen to it. The downloadable files can be saved, but because of the peculiar way that WebCT works you can't use the normal method for saving files in a browser (right-clicking on a link and choosing "Save target as") - if you try this you'll just get a strange error from the browser. Instead you need to open the downloadable file in a media player on the computer you're using - this will usually be Windows Media Player, but depending on how the computer is set up it may be Quicktime or Real Player or some other application.
If you click on the downloadable file link your media player should start to play the MP3 clip. You can then choose File|Save As from the player's menu which will allow you to save the MP3 file to disk, including a portable MP3 player if you have one plugged into the computer. If the media player starts up in a browser window, as Quicktime often does, then choose File|Save As from the browser menu. Some MP3 players and iPods may be clever enough to download the audio clip by themselves without you needing to manually save the file.
The School has run workshops on podcasting under the e-mentor programme. Details and dates are on the e-mentor workshops page, and there's a workshop follow-up page with links and documents, aimed primarily at attendees but perhaps of use to other colleagues.
Page last updated 28 March, 2012 . Site maintained by Fred Riley.
