time keeps on slipping into the future II

Filed in National by on March 11, 2009

Podcast trumps lecture in one college study

Students who listened to a lecture via iTunes U outperformed those who attended in person — pause button a factor

By Dennis Carter, Assistant Editor

The ability to pause and rewind podcast lectures gave the upper hand to college students in a recent study that compared the performance of students who attended a lecture in person and those who viewed it from iTunes University.

The study, “iTunes University and the Classroom: Can Podcasts Replace Professors?,” was conducted at the State University of New York Fredonia. It called for some introductory psychology students to watch a recorded lecture available online and others to attend a traditional classroom lecture.

Students who watched the lecture podcast–available from the iTunes U online video library–scored an average of 71 percent. Students who sat through the 30-minute classroom lecture scored an average of 62 percent,

About the Author ()

Jason330 is a deep cover double agent working for the GOP. Don't tell anybody.

Comments (4)

Trackback URL | Comments RSS Feed

  1. nemski says:

    Doesn’t one need professors to have an iTunes University podcast?

  2. liberalgeek says:

    I suppose that is true, Nemski. However, if the performance is better after listening to a podcast, perhaps one professor could have thousands of students, with little or no extra work.

  3. liberalgeek says:

    I guess at some point you can get a degree at $0.99 per class plus $100/test. It would be a pretty cool model.

  4. Unstable Isotope says:

    We can finally get rid of all those costly professors. The grading of a thousand students would be a bitch, though.