Work in progress — Using podcasting in engineering education

Podcasting allow students to learn outside the boundaries of the classroom and without time constraints. Podcasting is an audio broadcast that has been converted to an audio file format for playback over the Internet or in a digital music player. Podcasting cannot replace the classroom; however, it gives students a new way to broadcast concepts they have learned and allows educators to interact with their students. In a computer information system and software engineering course, podcasting was used to add value to the in-classroom experience and enhance course content. In both classes groups of students were required to investigate real-world software failures and produce a fifteen-minute podcast that demonstrated the failure and its impact on society. This work-in-progress will discuss how students used podcasting to understand how course content applied in the real world and how they could effectively communicate this knowledge to the rest of the class without taking class time and finally, how the students improved their teamwork skills by participating in the group podcasting assignment.