Live Streaming vs. Podcasting

Problem

Technological innovations and advances has enabled for radical developments in America’s education sector. Many technologies can now be used for educational purposes the two main ones being live streaming and podcasting (Cassidy, Colmenares, Jones, Manolovitz, Shen, Vieira, 2014). The two technologies are related in that the both can be used by lecturers to progress learning to students requiring special instruction. However, the key challenge associated with use of the two technologies in education is internet connectivity. Given that live-streaming requires greater internet connectivity resources than podcasting, this research proposals supports the use of podcasts over live-streaming for educational purposes (Cassidy et al., 2014).

Another issue associated with using live-streaming for educational purposes is that it is far more expensive in comparison to podcasting. For live-streaming to be adequately efficient, that is, it offers users a favorable experience; there is the need for high speed internet connectivity to be available (Ahn, Inboriboon, & Bond, 2016). The main challenge with depending on live streaming is that it results in the creation of barriers to affordable education due to the internet resources required to enable smooth functioning.

Lastly, live streaming may not serve in the best interests of students acquiring education through distance learning courses and any other avenues (Echenique, Molías, & Bullen, 2015). There are some parts of the US where internet connectivity and signal strengths are relatively low. For a student in a rural setting dependent on live streaming to gain learning instruction from an educator in a city, he or she will have to have access to internet speeds that allow for live-streaming. When there is poor connectivity, the student will miss out on gaining the intended instruction in a user friendly manner.

Recommendations

Education ought to be as cost effective and easily accessible as possible in an effort to ensure it universal reach to all students within America’s borders (Evmenova, & Weiss, 2015). As provided for in this paper, live-stream as an educational technology is expensive to use. For this reason, it is highly recommended that podcasts be adopted as the most preferable educational technology (Fish, Mun, & A’Jontue, 2016).

A podcast is basically an audio only or even and audio-visual recording presented in a number of installments or lectures which when combined together incorporate all the material for an entire course (Nogueiras, Iborra, & Herrero, 2015). For instance, a teacher or lecturer may opt to make podcasts available to his or her students after a classroom session to serve as reference material for further study through website or even as stored media in mp3 or mp4 format. If a teacher, instructor or professors opts to use podcasts and make them available to students via websites, the only internet resources use will be when uploading and downloading a particular lecture or class. This implies that less internet resources are necessary for teachers to make educational material available and for students to easily access such educational materials (Fish, Mun, & A’Jontue, 2016).

Even in regions in rural America where there may be poor connectivity, it is possible for students to live in among such populations and still continue with distance learning education (Nogueiras, Iborra, & Herrero, 2015). A student will only need to get to a nearby town to find reliable internet connectivity and download the learning instruction as well as send an email to confirm receipt.

Positive Implications

There are numerous positive applications that podcasting presents over live-streaming for the education sector. Most importantly, education, more so, tertiary education is quite expensive and requires students to have diverse sources of educational material which may not be possible for a number of reasons (Williams, Aguilar-Roca, & O’Dowd, 2016). One profound reason is inadequacies associated with inadequate financial capacity to invest in education. Technology has enabled for students to access learning material that is not only affordable but also tailor suited for specific educational goals. Lectures are critical in a student’s endeavor to master a certain course. The instructor, lecturer and tutor is therefore a primary source of credible material whose instruction is highly valuable to the learner (Williams et al., 2016). Through the conversion of lecture discussions into podcasts, students not only have access to educational information to enable them achieve learning goals but also allows for an affordable means of doing so.

Another reason as to why podcasts present students with a far more favorable outcomes than live-streaming is that; one can even continue to listen on to learning instruction while on the move or even taking time off to perform other necessary duties (Cassidy et al., 2014). For instance, a student can use an mp3 player to listen in on a particular lecture through headphones or earphones while at the gym, cooking, riding a bus and performing a diversity of other chores. Podcasting is therefore an effective way of gaining knowledge while multitasking on other necessary jobs.

Live-streaming may be favored since it is allows for instant feedback with education instructors as well as peers on the same technology platform (Price, & Kirkwood, 2014). However, it is critical to note that the same is also possible when a student opts to use podcasts although feedback has to be communicated via another different platform. This implies that feedback cannot be achieved on a real-time basis (Price, & Kirkwood, 2014). This is advantageous to a great extent since a student tends to first soak in the educational information offered and thereby is able to offer more informed feedback to the sender. Through short messaging services (SMS texts), phone calls, chats on social media, posting replies via the school websites and many more avenues, good feedback can be communicated to the instructor and vice versa.

Work Accomplished and Materials Reviewed

For the preliminary research, identification of research topic and supporting information involved a narrowed down search on Google Scholar and Ebscohost search databases. Search terms such as IT trends, current research on educational technologies, and others were utilized. Indeed, much information was accessed through these searches. The search terms were then further narrowed to terms like podcasts versus live streaming in education; podcasts benefits towards education and benefits of podcasts over livestreaming for tertiary education. This allowed for a more comprehensive and manageable search results of which 10 were adopted for critical review. I managed to use 5 journals in to support selection of the topic.

Work Remaining

For the remaining work, I will proceed to continue search several database such as ProQuest, Ebscohost and Google Scholar for research articles on the topic identified for the study. More so, information sources attained in previous searches aimed at pinpointing the research topic will also be used. Keywords, phrases and terms to be used in the actual research paper work will specifically delve on podcasting, associated benefits and application for educational purposes. I will dedicated a lot of time in reading through the already accessed materials as well as sources gained as I prepare the research paper.

References

Ahn, J., Inboriboon, P. C., & Bond, M. C. (2016). Podcasts: Accessing, Choosing, Creating, and Disseminating Content. Journal of Graduate Medical Education, 8(3), 435-436.

Cassidy, E. D., Colmenares, A., Jones, G., Manolovitz, T., Shen, L., & Vieira, S. (2014). Higher education and emerging technologies: Shifting trends in student usage. The Journal of Academic Librarianship, 40(2), 124-133.

Echenique, E. G., Molías, L. M., & Bullen, M. (2015). Students in higher education: Social and academic uses of digital technology. International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education, 12(1), 25-37.

Evmenova, A., & Weiss, M. (2015). Multimedia in Teaching and Learning: Content Acquisition Podcasts. In Innovations in Teaching & Learning Conference Proceedings (Vol. 7, No. 1, p. 90).

Fish, K., Mun, J., & A’Jontue, R. (2016). Do Visual Aids Really Matter? A Comparison of Student Evaluations before and after Embedding Visuals into Video Lectures. Journal of Educators Online, 13(1), 194-217.

Nogueiras, G., Iborra, A., & Herrero, D. (2015). Dialogical Podcasts to Promote Reflection and Self-Direction in Higher Education. Proceedings of EAPRIL, (2), 233-245.

Price, L., & Kirkwood, A. (2014). Using technology for teaching and learning in higher education: A critical review of the role of evidence in informing practice. Higher Education Research & Development, 33(3), 549-564.

Williams, A. E., Aguilar-Roca, N. M., & O’Dowd, D. K. (2016). Lecture capture podcasts: differential student use and performance in a large introductory course. Educational Technology Research and Development, 64(1), 1-12.