An article on BBC News , tells of a lecturer in northern England that has given up lectures and replaced them with podcasts.
One of his main motivations seems to be that he would like to spend more time focused on tutorials and small groups. He also believes that his students will review more of his content if they can do that where they want, and when they want.
I am intriuged by this idea and commend Dr Bill Ashraf at Bradford University for trying it out, I do have some questions though. Will he get more time with the students? Will this free up his time or initially will it take up much more time with technical support of problems, recording the lectures etc? I imagine next year things will be more effective as the lecture series can be re-run and that will free up a lot of time - but what about this year’s students will they suffer?
I imagine that things will balance out this year as students will be able to “attend” more of the lectures and also review the content as they are struggling with concepts during their revision and assignment work.
One of the other ideas, submitting questions via text message, I am not so sure of. I will be interested to see how many people use this route rather than in person or via email.
Providing all answers via a blog though must again only help students who need to review work for revision and other work. The body of work in this blog will also help students in succesive years.
Good Luck Dr Ashraf - and should you happen to come across this note - please keep us informed of your progress.