The trouble with podcasts...

... is that you can't glance at them.

Our tutor has posted an audio file with some tips about time management around using the module forums. I can see the benefits:

• more suited to auditory learning styles
• more accessible to visually impaired learners
• enables tutors to 'speak' to the whole group without incurring the costs (in time & money) of making multiple phonecalls
• a stable resource, not ephemeral like the spoken content of  a phonecall, unrecorded Skype/Elluminate session or F2F tutorial
• flexible in terms of tutor/student schedules because it's asynchronous

But... but... but.... I still resist. 
 The idea of making a similar podcast for my own students founders on the reefs of so many objections:

• it would be less likely to reach them than a group email. It's hard enough persuading them to log on & participate even passively in the forums
• it would be time-consuming. I'm not comfortable recording spontaneously, so the podcast would have to be scripted - in which case, why not simply email the script?
• these are level 1 Humanities students: they want to learn about history & literature & art, not 'all that techie stuff'. 
• hypocrisy: if I find it hard to recall what I've heard in a podcast, what right do I have to reproach my students for sharing my reluctance to learn this way?
• I hate the sound of my own voice!

I'm taken back to my own learning experience almost 40 years ago during my first undergraduate degree, when most of the teaching took the form of lectures, which I had to treat as speed-dictation exercises. I remember the distress & panic during the spring term of my final year, when chilblains on my fingers meant I couldn't write fast enough to capture everything. I remember my anger: if they wanted us to know this stuff, why didn't they put it on a handout for us, instead of privileging those students who could write faster?

So our tutor offered six tips for coping with the forums. I don't have a problem with the forums, so perhaps I didn't need to take them all in, but I can only remember two of them. To capture the full set, I would need to replay the podcast & take notes. A two-minute recording would expand into ten minutes of start-stop-write-start. A forum post could have been re-scanned in seconds. 

That's the trouble with podcasts.