Podcasting - publishing mp3-interviews on websites - has become more popular in the social sciences, including anthropology. But as Paul Ayres writes in an article for ALISS Quarterly, the journal of the Association of Librarians and Information professionals in the Social Sciences, content producers have already started to move on to video.
Audio podcasting won’t take over the world, he explains:
Audio as a format has a number of limitations. It can be inefficient, as it takes 10 minutes to listen to a 10 minute audio file, plus time to download it as well. Much of this information could be summed up in a short piece of text that is easier to scan and retain. Plus, some content does not lend itself to being read out loud, such as complex URLs or detailed instructions.
In the Higher Education context, providing only the audio of a lecture leaves out PowerPoint slides, data, charts or diagrams that may illustrate a point and it also limits the presenter to a chalk and talk approach, which excludes problem based learning techniques and active learning strategies, which require interaction in the lecture theatre or classroom.
Information Professionals may find audio only user education assets very limiting. With an increasing number of online services available, screencasts that offer commentary on a video walkthrough of a service, website or database, will give a visual cue and a more meaningful learning experience to students.So users and content producers have already started to move on to video and it’s clear that audio podcasting won’t take over the world. Awareness of podcasts has only increased marginally in the last 18 months, and some say that it suffers from the “try me” virus effect, where something may be cool or interesting to sample, but not be engaging enough to return to.
>> read the whole article “Podcasting and Audio in the Social Sciences”
SEE ALSO:
Anthropology podcasts receive much attention
The Future of Anthropology: “We ought to build our own mass media”
Video by anthropologist Michael Wesch: How collaborative technologies change scholarship
This entry was posted by admin and filed under Open Access Anthropology and Knowledge Sharing, anthropology (general), University / Academia. 
Interesting, this tendency some people have to look for “The Next Big Thing.” It was in fact the drive behind much (audio) podcasting, two years ago. It was also behind the move to video podcasting a year or so ago. It might be behind the current trend in screencasting.
What’s missing, is a broader perspective, which integrates technology, social change, and culture.
In terms of learning, audio-only podcasts have advantages. For instance, the MP3 format is supported by a large array of devices, some of which are quite inexpensive. Recording speech can be quite easy and inexpensive. Sound files are typically smaller than video files of the same length. Audio editing requires relatively little resources compared to video editing. Audio files are easy to synchronise with slides or other visual data. One can listen to something while doing something else, which can make for almost-subliminal learning. Some devices allow for “speed-listening” (with or without the “chipmunk effect") which can have some interesting cognitive effects. Many lectures are already based on speech and auditory learning is well-established. Audio recordings are more easily “omnidirectional” than video recordings, allowing for “polyvocality” in both the literal sense and the figurative sense.
Of course, these are not meant to imply that audio-only podcasting is the end-all solution for “transmitting information.” But, having been listening to a lot of audio-only podcasts and having used some in my own teaching, I must say that I find them quite useful.
I’ll be experimenting more with screencasts in the future. With Slideshare’s slidecast feature, ProfCast, and the latest version of Keynote, some people can easily combine presentation and sound.
The URL I used for this comment is a link to one of my own presentations shared as a slidecast.