INTERVIEW WITH GILLY SALMON Gilly Salmon is Professor of e-learning and Learning Technologies at the University of Leicester, where she is responsible for the academic development and co-ordination of the University's distance learning programmes, providing leadership for research into e-learning, guidance to senior staff and committees throughout the University on the development of e-learning.
1) Could you please explain how was IMPALA project born? Where were the studies made? Who made them? We noticed a strong surge of interest from university teachers in the use of downloadable audio files in 2005-06. And we watched hundreds of students walking around campus, sitting on the buses, or lying on the grass in the park, with MP3 players and iPods. What previously appeared to be a somewhat ‘techie’ approach to playing music suddenly looked to us like something that might have high value for learning. Then the UK Higher Education Academy (HEA) funded us to carry out a pedagogical podcasting research project – Informal Mobile Podcasting And Learning Adaptation (IMPALA). This is how IMPALA project was born. The studies of IMPALA project were conducted in five universities in the UK: • • • • • •
An undergraduate module in Engineering at the University of Leicester An undergraduate module in English and Communication at Kingston University An undergraduate module in Geography at Kingston University An undergraduate module in Human Geography at the University of Gloucestershire An undergraduate module in Geography at the University of Nottingham Undergraduate courses in Veterinary Sciences at the Royal Veterinary College
More than 200 students and 20 academic staff took part in IMPALA research during academic years 2006 and 2007. 2) How do you think is the learning of a new discipline using podcast? Podcasting can be very useful to support the learning of a new discipline in a number of ways: • • • • • • •
Providing introductory, summary of overview of the new discipline Explaining threshold concepts and difficult content within the discipline Showing and demonstrating instructions and procedures through video podcasts if the discipline involves practical work Offering instructions, guidance and support through podcasts Providing additional materials (i.e. audios, videos, images) to supplement student learning Capturing contributions from lecturers, tutors, students, subject experts to support student learning Providing feedback through podcasts to engage learners differently
3) You talk about various tipologies of podcasting, as “podcasting and lectures”, “podcasting and praticals”, or “podcasting and resources and students’ storytelling”. Can you explain us what are they? Which of these ways do you think is the best to give the students an easier learning? By typologies of podcasting, I mean different types or approaches of podcasting. In the podcasting book, Podcasting for Learning in Universities, that was published in 2008, we divided podcasting into nine categories, depending on the pedagogical purposes embedded in the podcasts: