Listening to podcasted versions of university lectures seems to be better for students than simply going to class, according to new research by State University of New York (SUNY) Fredonia psychologist Dani McKinney. Her study, titled “iTunes University and the classroom: Can podcasts replace Professors?” suggests that students who download the podcast version of a class tend to achieve better academic performance than those who don’t, though it’s more about what the students do when they download the podcast than the existence of the podcast itself.
In order to study how students soaked up information, McKinney and her team gave a psychology lecture to 64 students. The students were then split into groups after the lecture, one group receiving printed slides and the other being instructed to download the podcast, which was synchronized with video of the slides. The students were instructed to keep notes, as they were to be tested on the material a week later.
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