By DPA
Hamburg : Andreas Nath has been doing a long distance course of study in business information technology for quite a while. But this past winter semester, he attended his first long distance lecture, thanks to a podcast.
The podcast meant that instead of pouring through reference materials, he dialled up a lecture on algorithms at the University of Osnabrueck from his own computer.
“As I don’t have any lectures, it was a nice change of pace,” says the 29-year-old.
He’s not alone. About 2,800 users subscribed to the podcast lecture. Every time a new lecture appeared, they downloaded it from the university.
“Podcasts are a good way to make quality lectures available over the Internet,” says Tim Schmidt of the Centre for Information Management and Virtual Education at the University of Osnabrueck (virtUOS).
Podcasts are audio or video files made available on Internet servers. Special software lets people sort the files by topic. Software automatically checks for new episodes and downloads them for subscribers.
Colleges in Hamburg have started Project Podcampus with Multimedia Kontor Hamburg. Their podcast platform has about 300 speeches on science and research. Apart from stored versions of lectures and special programmes, there are special education materials available on the platform.
“We started this to test the uses of podcasting for education,” said Anette Stoeber of the Multimedia Kontor. “You can’t escape podcasts in e-learning any more.”
The files can be transferred to MP3 players smoothly. “That means students can listen to the lecture again on their way to university,” says Stoeber.
The Institute for Political Science at the University of Giessen also produces podcasts. But instead of offering full lectures, it has interviews with academics on offer.
“Podcasts are a new way of learning and they complement face-to-face education by online instruction,” says Christoph Bieber of the university’s Centre for Media and Interactivity.
The Internet can also be used to offer additional material for individual lessons or discussion forums.
“There’s a difference if students just learn from books or if they have an exchange with professors and fellow students via Internet,” explains Bieber. “Learning becomes more communicative. Podcasts are a good addition to these offerings.”
Internet: www.mmkh.de, www.podcampus.de, www.virtuos.uni-osnabrueck.de, www.zmi.uni-giessen.de.