The project “Læring rett i lomma” – translated roughly to "Learning right in your pocket" – is supposed to make lectures available anytime, anywhere. The relationship between student and lecturer will be weakened, thinks philosophy professor.

2010-03-17 På norsk

– Might have heard the jokes before

Leader of the Student Parliament Mari Helén Varøy called for online recordings of lectures in Universitas last August. Podcasting has been a phenomenon for years at several large universities in USA. At the University of Oslo there are still several lecturers who refuse to podcast their classes. The concern is that students will stop going to class, and that the interaction between lecturer and student will change.

– It will not be very inspirational if you know that the listeners might have heard the educational cliffhangers and certain jokes before, if they listened to last semester´s podcast. The nerve of the lecture is gone for the listeners if all the points are known from before. That is the reason for my not wanting to publish lecture notes before the actual lecture, says philosophy professoer Per Ariansen.

Positive students

Last spring, the sociology programme committee carried out a survey in the class Modern Sociological Theory, in which the lectures were podcasted. 81 percent of the students who answered the survey said that they never considered dropping a lecture because they could download it later. 17 percent did however answer that they had considered not going to class. Gunnar Aakvaag lectures in the class and has mostly gained positive experience concerning podcasting. He will therefore continue to publish his lectures online.

– My biggest concern – students not showing up in class – has not been realized. My students are also very positive towards podcasting, which is decisive. Apart from a few jokes depending on context and unfavorable formulations being taped, I don´t feel that podcasting limits my teaching. Aakvaag says that podcasting doesn´t bring any extra work. – It takes two minutes to get the equipment at the IT-office, one minute to fix it up before the lecture, and fifteen minutes to publish the lectures. There hasn´t been any extra work, at least not for me.

Eternal life?

Knut Hermundsrud Aukrust, professor at the Department of Culture Studies and Oriental Languages, agrees with Aakvaag.

– Podcasting is great. I usually think I´m babbling along, but if it can help students, I´ll be happy, says Aukrust, who has been podcasting since last autumn. The university project Læring rett i lomma includes pedagogical, technical, juridical, organizational and cultural aspects concerning podcasting. According to project leader Bent Kure the goal is that the lecture is to be available after it´s finished.

– Podcasting allows repetition, and can function as help for those whose first language is something else than Norwegian, or dyslectics, or people who learn by hearing, or those who are hearing impaired. Some people also suffer from phobias of large masses of people, and are reluctant towards going to lectures with several hundred people, says Kure.

– Without the podcast, the lecture is “dead” the moment the lecturer says that it´s finished. It´s gone. Students who would like to repeat the lecture, or were absent, have no chance to listen to it afterward. Therefore we want to immortalize the lecture, he says.

Melike Leblebicioglu • Translated by Ingrid F. Brubaker