Podcasting in Education: Student Attitudes, Behaviour and Self-Efficacy (Report‪)‬

Many universities now routinely offer web-based lecture recordings or podcasts. Although recording material for students is not new to education, growing attention has been given to podcasting in the last decade with technological changes that make producing and accessing lecture recordings increasingly easy. The issue occupies a growing slice of the educational literature, with both theoretical and empirical articles on the topic. As Harris and Park (2008) note, educational podcasts can serve a range of purposes from augmenting teaching through to recruiting new students, providing tours of the university, and offering pastoral care. Research has tended to focus on the first of these and within this category studies have examined student behaviour and perceptions of podcasting, the impact of podcasting on student learning, and staff responses. Although these three areas are interrelated, this article focuses on the first: student use and attitudes. Studies of student use and attitudes towards podcasting began to appear in the literature in 2006 and a picture of student behaviour and satisfaction is beginning to emerge. Generalising from this research, however, needs to be conducted with some caution as studies vary on a range of dimensions including the ways in which podcasts have been incorporated into courses, disciplines examined, size of courses and response rates, the time of semester at which the surveys were conducted, and the methods (paper versus online) of survey administration.