Author: David Gill, d.w.j.gill@swansea.ac.uk

Author: Chris Hall, c.m.hall@swan.ac.uk

JISC e-Learning Activity Area: Learning Resources and Activities

Higher Education Academy Subject Centre: History, Classics and Archaeology

This case study illustrates...use of podcasting, an effect on learning, an effect on exam results, an effect on student personal development, student satisfaction with e-learning, innovation in learning and teaching, staff satisfaction with e-learning, staff personal development, a positive effect on recruitment, a positive effect on retention, an influence on policy, use of resources, modifications to learning spaces, management of learning assets, an effect on social equality

Technology Used

What technologies and/or e-tools were available to you?

The audio recording in the field was made with a hand-held Olympus VN-960PC recorder which can be plugged into a PC (not Mac) via USB. This has a clip-on microphone and was easy to operate in museums and on archaeological sites. This recorder is compact and fairly robust - and it came with a recommendation from anthropologists.

Images were taken on a Canon Powershot (with 1 GB CF card) which were then transferred onto a PowerBook or an eMac.

Audio and images were combined on a Mac using iMovie Software. (The USB audio files were transferred from a PC and worked perfectly on the Mac via iTunes.) The software comes as standard on Mac OS X and there is an easy visual interface to align image and audio. The iMovie software has an interface with iTunes (for audio recordings) and iPhoto (for images) which assists with the compilation of the podcast.

Alternatively the podcast could be prepared - for non Mac users - on Moviemaker for Windows.

The podcast could then be uploaded onto either Blackboard, iTunes or a commercial server. iMovie allows the creation of webstreaming or DVD quality files but these are considerably larger.