The educational value of student-generated podcasts.

Podcasting is becoming a well established technology in Higher Education (HE). However, most applications tend to use staff-developed content to provide material to supplement lectures. The use of learner-generated podcasts and its impact on the learning of both student producers and listeners are under researched. This paper reports on a pilot study of studentcreated podcasts. The podcasts were developed by a group of medical students at the University of Leicester who chose to study a genetic module in their second year. The content of the podcasts was entirely generated by students. Their topics covered a range of ethical issues surrounding genetics. Five student-developed podcasts were made available in early 2007 for other medical students to access through the Medical School Virtual Learning Environment (VLE). The study focused on the impact of these student-developed podcasts on student producers’ learning. It demonstrated how podcasting can empower learners and help them become more active and independent learners, and how student-developed podcasts can promote engagement and motivation for learning, improve cognitive learning and develop transferable team-working skills among student producers. The paper offers an example of student-generated podcasts from practice and insights on how this practice might be expanded and transferred to other learning contexts with HE sectors.