Podcasting in Engineering Education: A Preliminary Study of Content, Student Attitudes, and Impact

Podcasting continues to emerge as a popular and flexible medium for content delivery with a projected subscriber base of nearly 50 million by the year 2010 (Gilbert 2005). As instructors have begun to use podcasts more frequently to enhance online courses or supplement traditional classroom courses, institutions have begun to adopt campus-wide initiatives to support such practices. The Duke Digital Initiative arguably ignited this trend a few years ago, and current trends (Apple iTunesU, iTunesU pages at Stanford and Berkeley, Purdue's Boilercast) suggest that podcasting for higher education will happen on a broad scale. Indeed, Educause recently released a podcast about podcasting (Clark 2006).