Sheffield Dental school gave an interesting presentation about using student led podcasting to replace group presentations that were traditionally accompanied by power points. The group presentation forms part of the assessment but they were finding several problems

• death by powerpoint!
• Repetition between groups
• the "take away" message was incomplete - just a power poin
• Lack of enthusiasm by the students

The decided that they would have a go at getting the students to create 5 minute audio podcasts

They split the group of 80 students into self elected groups of 5 who were given 2 weeks to come up with the podcast

Subjects were based around peer review of a paper or case study

The groups all seemed to find their way around using freely available tools and didnt seem to need any support - there seemed to be always someone in each group who understood the technology The resulting podcasts varied from fairly plain presentations to more elaborate ones with background music and interesting styles.  They all uploaded the podcasts through blackboard which became called the "podcast wall" (a la Facebook)

The groups each assessed two other groups podcasts based on agreend criteria matric based on Hefce report

To evaluate the idea the the students convened focust groups, there was a questionnaire and informal feedback

The results were that

• All groups delivered a podcast
• varying quality but all fit for purpose
• everyone in the group talk (stipulated from the start)
• not one student made any formal technical enquiry
• students felt it was difficult to shrink the topics into 5 minutes (though found time to include music intros etc!)
• Comments centreed on equity an fairness
• there were no comments about the technical aspects
• most enjoyed the experience of gathering together to record (not stipulated but what they chose to do)
• most felt that unline the presentations where they had each done their own bit - they all benefited by working to gether on the podcasts
• Just a few expressed concerns that this was a kind of cross over into their personal space - "my ipod is for music!"
• and some found the podcasts hard to visualise without pictures

Overall it was considered a success with a much higher standard than achieved through presentations, the podcasts also formed a more permanent record of the whole presentation  rather than just a power point - most groups chose to listen to all the other podcasts and not just the one's that they had to review

Plan to continue for the future and considering new aspects

• on line peer assessment in blackboard v 8
• RSS feeds for podcasts
• video casts being considered