Last week’s Boston Globe article mentioned podcasting efforts underway at Emerson College, but did not mention any public podcast subscriptions available through the school–only faculty and staff internal initatives, which is still great. As an incoming student in the fall, I was curious to know if any of these lectures were in fact available to the public.

A quick search on Google with the terms “Emerson College”+”Podcast”, yielded a few results:

• “Emerson Experience“, located at the website of Undergraduate Admissions, is a “weekly showcase of the Emerson college community. Produced by the offices of Student Affairs at Emerson College.” - iTunes Music Store Description (link to podcast on iTunes)

• JSONS (Journalism Online Students’ News Service) has a weekly podcast (link to feed address), “the week’s top JSONS stories on Emerson, Boston, New England and the nation.” - JSON’s podcasts

• The Fred Freddy Podcast at WECB

I’m sure there’s probably more, but this was great to see from a quick search. What would be even better, would be if the Emerson Experience and JSONS podcasts were located on a blog, as is the Fred Freddy podcast.

• For the Emerson Experience, a blog could invite feedback from accepted undergrads to increase opportunities for online communication with the admissions department.

• For the JSONS audio blog, while making the podcast available in iTunes, it could also provide an opportunity for students, teachers at Emerson, and anyone else around the world to participate in online conversations about content found in the podcast.

The reason I am so glad that AudioBerkman has moved to a blog, is that it finally allows for listeners to continue the conversation, from issues raised in the podcast, on the blog–increasing opportunities for further learning and access to knowledge.

Putting audio or a link to a podcast on a website is one thing, but creating an online space where conversations can continue with people interested in the content is essential. Particularly for producers, like myself, who can spend many hours creating podcasts. Instead of just ending up in an online archive, an audio or video blog with coursework or other learning material would allow for longer lasting opportunities for sharing ideas and learning.

I’m also interesting to know if there have been Emerson faculty who have created public course blogs?

Emerson’s Instructional Technology Group has a nice website of resources for faculty, including their Wiki Main Page. Thanks to them for making this page public.

Again, the main problem I had with the Globe Article, is it’s reinforcement of the damaging belief that students won’t show up if educators publish their lectures as a podcast. Quite frankly, this is crap. Teachers take attendance. If you miss a class, your grade will go down.

If you skipped a class to listen to the podcast, at least that’s better than skipping the class and not paying attention to the class at all. Furthermore, teachers also grade based on class participation. If you graded your class on course blog participation, this would be one aspect of participation that should be considered alongside in-class participation.

It’s frustrating to continue to see the newspapers play on fears (as they commonly do) to sell newspapers–specially when it comes to education and opportunities to use new media tools for learning.

Blogging and podcasting (and videoblogging) can provide important opportunities for students to participate in coursework. Going a step further, public course blogs could increase access to knowledge and help stimulate a culture of sharing, instead of a culture that locks down ideas and opportunities for learning. This would have been nice to see in the globe article, at least a mention of it.

On a lighter (and exciting) note: I also found Emerson’s Digital Media Group blog. It’s a little out of date, probably given the summer. But, it’s really great to see students at Emerson embracing Free Culture. I hope it continues in the fall.

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