Student Reviews of the Podcast
Thank you to EOU Student Worker, Tessmarie Kodept for her help in the transcription of this information.

This first podcast was produced with students from the winter quarter 105 class. So I thought it might be interesting to see how the Spring quarter 105 class received and interacted with the podcast. This is a sample of responses that I received from about 27 students who participated in this evaluation. For some extra credit points the students were asked to respond to four questions that focused on content and delivery. Question three attempted to deal with affective issues and subjective learning styles which we had discussed as a class prior to this extra credit assignment

1. From this assignment, how did these students "experience" the process of diffusion?
2. Briefly discuss the idea of symbolism in the cultural landscape.
3. On a scale of 1-5 1 being poor 5 being the best, how well did you interact with the material in the podcast: Interact means: based on the delivery of the content, did your mind stay focused?
4. Any other comments? GO TO NEXT SET

The following are transcriptions from student responses to number 3 and number 4.
Comments from M. Mustoe in green

QUESTION 3 On a scale of 1-5 1 being poor 5 being the best, how well did you interact with the material in the podcast: Interact means: based on the delivery of the content, did your mind stay focused...

On a scale of one to five I interacted with this assignment probably a 4. I think that the pod cast was done very well. The background music really made me more interested in the presentation. One other thing that got my attention was the different presentations done by the students. This really made it more interesting because it wasn't just one person doing all the talking. The last thing that helped keep my attention was the fact that I know most of the students and therefore was more interested in hearing what they had to say.

I would give the pod cast a 4 in my opinion. While it was interesting to hear the different ways the students found the truck, I found my mind wandering into other thoughts. I liked the pod cast and though it was pretty interesting but just a little boring.

I give my performance of staying focused a 3 because I kind of lost interest when the music started to play because it was putting me to sleep and I had no idea what they were singing about.

This is an interesting comment in that there was only one musical piece in the podcast that had words(Japanese) and those were masked behind a main narration.

The pod cast was good but it is like listening to a movie on tape and it's hard to stay focused without pictures, also you must be interested in what you are listening to, to stay focused.

I give the pod cast a 2, just because listening to audio is hard for me. I learn a lot better and retain things when I can see them happen or see actually see how they work.

These students are thinking about their learning styles. In my opinion the is something we rarely consider in the marketing of distance education courses to the masses. A strictly oral podcast Ed presentation, if this were the format of a distance class, would fail this student.

I give the pod cast a 3, I had a hard time because I am a visual learner and not having something to look at such as text, was difficult for me to stay focused.

Again a learning style issue.

I would have to say a 5. I really enjoyed the experience, and after I finally got it downloaded thought the whole thins was easy to use. It was long enough to provide good information and short enough to keep my attention. I didn't find my mind wandering or getting distracted at all. I also like the fact that I could pause to jot down notes.

Great job and you have a great voice for recordings like this. Fun!!

On a scale of 1 to 5, this group that listened to this decide that we would rate it a 3. This is because we agree that we like to see who is talking to us. This helps us focus better and keeps our attention better. We liked it when we heard the students talk because some of them were people we knew and could relate to.

This is a provocative statement,"we like to see who is talking to us." Throughout the era in which radio dominated the media...seeing who was talking to you was not possible. But the success of radio during that time doesn't seem to suggest that the lack of imagery in this oral media was detrimental.
Is this statement indicative of the impact of the availability of images to deliver information....a voice from the generation of living in an image-based society?

If this is the way all DDE classes will soon be taught, it might be a problem to visual learners, and people who like to interact 1 on 1 with a teacher.

But from this, the question for instructors might well be, who will take this very real limitation into account? I have taught distance classes long enough to have a sense that many of the students who fail in these classes do so because they become boggled down in a delivery system that either does not consider the diversity of these learning modalities or students themselves have not considered.

I think it is really great what your doing here. Using a different method of teaching so that students can become more well rounded in their learning experiences. I have to say that this pod cast experience is different from anything I have ever done and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Thanks.

Based on the delivery of the material on the pod cast I was able to stay focused on the content of it. I would give this pod cast a 4. I thought that is was interesting to hear the different perspectives that people had on their way of obtaining information to where the truck was located and what the teddy bear meant to them from their past experience.

I would definitely give you pod cast a two thumps up all the way!!!The information grabbed my interest and keep it the entire time. I keep waiting to see where you were going to take it next, each idea and perspective brought new light to geography. I was disappointed when it ended, I could not believe that the 15 minutes was already up.

Great job Dr. M. I will watch you website for new pod cast. Thank you for being such an awesome, dedicated professor.

I would rate my interaction at a 5. I have to admit; when I was sitting down to listen to the pod cast I was dreading it. I wanted to hurry and get if over with. However, when I started to listening to the commentary, I was really interested and focused on what the students had to say about their experience with the assignment. I almost wish we could have done that particular assignment.

If all quite DDE was in this format, I would start taking those kind of classes.

An interesting contrasts to some of the other students. Is this an auditory learner? On another note these days, consider the incredible success of books-on-tape. These are really nothing but podcasts in an analog fashion, but auditory in delivery.

I found the pod cast to be quite interesting. I also realized that I don't need to be so intimidated by Cultural Geography!!!

Very well presented and very interesting!!!

I would rate this podcast cast a 4. This pod cast taught me what diffusion in geography is. It was interesting hearing all of the students' responses. My only critique would be to not have music with words. When the Japanese student was talking, there were words in the background, making it even harder to understand him. Otherwise, this was a well produced pod cast.

This observation is well taken here and I was aware of the problems that this may have presented during this segue. I was stuck with the material that I had at this point and rather than cutting and pasting I masked down the lyrics of the song as much as possible. Generally, in radio etiquette, talking over a singer is not appropriate, but can be done, and must be done in some cases. The real issue here is if the presentation is not balanced and annoying then the listener will have a problem with receiving the information.

I would choose 5 out of 5.

4.999 I really liked this "pod cast"! It was actually quite interesting, and by adding music and different dialogue, it really keep my attention the whole 15 minutes!

I had like the concept and the experiment because it demonstrates to the students to clearly understand the concept of diffusion and cultural landscape in our environment. The demonstration also made the students understand what symbolism is and it's significant, what it represents.

I liked how you made the students think about why the teddy bear was there and what the teddy bear was saying.

I appreciate having the opportunity to try different learning experiences. Engaging in different learning activities and the free flow of your class environment has shaken me out of the confined seriousness I had placed on my education. Thank you for all your contribution.

My only comment would be to add some type of visual aspect to the pod cast.

This can be done....but server space quickly becomes an issue. I'm interested in investigating whether still images tied to the auditory presentation...have the same teaching potential with this medium as video might....then again, analog slide shows have been around a long time.

What I didn't like about the pod cast was that on my computer it took a really long time to download before I could listen to it. Once it was downloaded it was fine.
Another technical side of the problem of this delivery mode. Dial-up subscribers will really have a  problem with this form of content delivery.

I believe that this would definitely be a great tool for any distance education courses. It would be very beneficial to those students who understand material better through audio and listening information.

GO TO NEXT SET