Looks like a huge space, I’m jealous.

I’m going to have to differ with you on this one. Sure, a boring lecture makes a boring podcast, but even that may be helpful for students to review certain points. Even a boring lecture will indicate areas of emphasis that may be helpful to students. Note-taking in a wiki is a fabulous way to go, of course, but the recorded lecture is a good reality check next to that. In other words, I don’t think podcasts of lectures have to rise all the way to “engaging” to be of some value for some students. They won’t be shining examples of the power of podcasting, no, but if there’s little cost associated with producing, storing, or transmitting them, why not?

I know that lectures have a very bad name in the academy right now, and I can’t say that there’s no good reason for that. A bad lecture is a truly horrible thing to sit through. But there are plenty of good lectures on college campuses. The genre itself is not necessarily more prone to abuse than, say, small group work, which has its own set of assumptions and abuses. And what is a great conference presentation but a lecture? I spend a lot of time every week listening to IT Conversations, and of course they aren’t conversations at all: they’re lectures with Q&A following. And in most cases, they’re superb.

That said, I think “In Our Time” panel discussions would be where I would start with enterprise-wide professor content. The format is very engaging, and the side benefit would be to encourage cross-disciplinary conversations.

My fear is that any absolute embrace or rejection of any channel of communication in higher education will throw the baby out with the bathwater. A great lecture is an awesome thing. I’d give a lot of money to have recordings of some of the lectures I heard as an undergrad. No, I wouldn’t want a steady diet of lectures–but I wouldn’t want a steady diet of any one communication channel.

Likewise: as a film studies guy, I’m used to hearing people say that books are always better than movies. ‘Tain’t necessarily so!

I’ve experimented with using podcasts for grade 11 and 12 students in a Computer Networking course. My experience is that short (under 10 minutes) podcasts work well, either for a summative overview of a module or section, or for providing some alternate explanations or analogies for students. I also think that podcasts could be great if students had the chance to create them as part of their learning and assessment, or for recording short Q and A sessions between an instructor and 1 or 2 students.

And Gardner, I think that you are a very good podcaster because you create that sense of one-on-one conversation in your podcasts – your radio background is showing! When I listened to A Donne a Day, I heard something read to me as an individual, not me as a member of an audience. The reminiscences you shared made me feel like we were having a chat over coffee.