Should Professors Podcast?

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In “Should Professors Podcast Their Lectures” by Jason Shepard, he describes both the pros and cons of podcasting. Podcasts are video recordings made to download onto a computer, tablet, etc. In the beginning, Shepard states his main points on why podcasting would benefit the teachers and students. His reasoning is that it will help the professors connect with the younger generation, make repetition unnecessary and it will give the less knowledgeable a chance to catch up to speed. As the article goes on Shepard changes his position and argues on why podcasting is bad. One of the biggest cons about podcasting is that it encourages laziness. Students would be more apt to skip class and the professors would feel less inclined to focus on classroom instructional methods (4). The second reason why podcasting shouldn’t be in the classroom is because if the student did not understand the explanation because it was unclear, they could go back and listen to it as many times as they want but the podcast would still be unclear. Students would not be able to ask questions to the professors to help clarify. The negatives of podcasting in the classroom outweighs the positive. Shepard discusses that because the class would be on a podcast, students would be more likely to skip class. To find this information out, Shepard did an informal survey of college students. However, the article did not include any numbers or statistics from the survey, but it did contain a quote from a second-year college student. The information is convincing, but it is not quite credible. To make the article more credible, I would’ve gotten more in depth with the survey. Another point Shepard makes is that professors will not be as concerned about rushing through information because if a student missed something, they could just go back and listen to the podcast again. This helps proves his point that

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