The unintentional podcaster
Your past self is one of, or perhaps the most important friend you’ll ever have. I have recently started my annual course in Building physics which consists of Acoustics and Moisture transport. By now, I have enough experience to simply “wing” the acoustics part and get away with it, but Moisture theory is something completely different. Being a teacher in a topic you do not fully master is one of the scariest things I can think of. And now I have four lectures is Moisture transport approaching fast. Here, my past self has got my back covered, because last year when I did the lectures for the first time, I recorded all of it. It turned out extremely useful for rehearsal purposes.
A cool thing with lectures that I have noted is that they tend to work rather well as podcasts. The visual slides are not as important as one might think. I have been listening to my own lectures while walking my dogs lately and it is somewhat surprising how much of the content that actually sticks from listening only. If your are a teacher and decide to increase the accessibility of your content, one of the things you must consider is visually impaired students. By reading out aloud and explaining extra clear what you are doing, you will help out those guys a lot. An unexpected bonus is that your recordings will double as podcasts. By the way, from what I can tell all the adaptations you do as a teacher to increase accessibility tend to improve life for everyone. It is rather obvious when you stop to think about it. An improved audio presentation during the lecture will bring a lot of value to everyone and not just those who have problems with their ears. The same thing goes for visual impairment. If you have students that cannot see 100%, you should adapt by making your slides less cluttered, higher contrast, larger font size etc. And of course, that helps everyone. Clearly a win-win situation. My “discovery” of unintended podcasts is just another confirmation of that hypothesis.
My lecture recordings can be considered as an audio book version of the course literature, albeit with my own personal twist and touch. But either way, it opens up another channel of knowledge acquisition. Last year, the student review of the course indicated that I should spend less time lecturing and more time doing calculations. The recorded lectures allow me to do just that. A neatly packaged YouTube playlist with four 1,5-2h lectures is an excellent help. I could perhaps tell the student to listen to lecture 1 before the first scheduled classroom session, lecture 2 before the second and so on and so forth. Then I can jump straight into the calculations when we gather in the classroom, when I know we don’t start from zero. Personally, I think a lecture is pretty much a monologue anyway and thus it does not bring much extra value to do it live. During the Covid years, the students were exceptionally shy and hardly asked any questions at all, even during calculation sessions. No cameras were turned on and no-one said a word. That’s when I decided to stop doing Zoom lectures. It felt like a complete waste of time. Better to simply accept them as monologues and use better platforms than Zoom, Youtube for example. And replace the scheduled slots with some other learning activity. We’ll see if student interaction improves in the classroom when I try this out later this spring.
Anyways, the topic was unintentional podcasting. Let’s round this up by listing a couple of great benefits that lecture recordings will bring. Redundancy – If you are sick or cannot attend a scheduled lecture, you will now have a backup plan. Just send them a link. This brings peace of mind. Another redundancy aspect is that just as I have now used my own lectures to rehearse and refresh, a teacher colleague can do the same. It will simplify transfer of course ownership between teachers, something that otherwise can be a proper challenge. It’s not that easy to grab someone else’s slides. And last by not least, the redundancy aspect can be a game changer for the students. They might also get sick and miss a lecture. And they can pause and reflect and listen to the content as many times as they like. If you are a lecturer, I strongly recommend you start recording them. It also has the effect that when the red recording light is on, you will sharpen yourself.