Proposal for the podcasting of courses SPC

Podcasting of actual courses given at Saint Peter's College would have the following benefits:

• course material would stay "evergreen" on file servers,
• the instructor's presence would no longer be required to give the course, freeing him/her for other duties,
• courses could be given "on demand" and be available 24 hours a day,
• course material can be written, oral, video or any combination of the three,
• the material can be made available for "auditing" by anyone, providing a service to the wider community at no cost, except for bandwidth*,
• the material can be made for "curriculum" credits and "paid for" by the students, providing the college as well as the student body with the possibility of "extension courses."
• It would be excellent promotional material for St. Peter's. Even parts of the courses can be edited together into several promos.***
• It would be excellent promotional material for the faculty of St. Peter's.

The production costs can be minimized by making the recording of courses available at reduced cost for students as part of their communication studies. (This favors any double majors or major/minor in communications since the recording can be part of the communication curriculum.)

It would require no additional outlay for course preparation and/or delivery as the course has to be given to the student body.

It would only require the recording (and that can be made part of the communication curriculum.)

The recording equipment can range from

• very inexpensive (~$150 for a VGA [640x480] quality, one hour recording, PureDigital Flip™ camera & stand*) to
• pro-sumer HD cameras (~1,000 video and audio, various models, resolutions and manufacturers**) to
• very expensive (>$45,000HD "Red" camera + >$1,000 audio)

* The use of the Flip™ camera would also allow the college to put the courses out on YouTube™ for auditing or on St Peter's own servers for access by the student body. (If these are supposed to entice the student into attending the college.)

** Standard or HD quality digital cameras can be used for recording courses for use by registered students.

*** It makes for excelent promotion. It is now being used by by Stanford. (see: http://www.deviceguru.com/2008/09/17/stanford-frees-cs-robotics-courses/ )

I would recommend using both a Flip™ and a pro-sumer camera for simultaneous recording.

The cameras are now small, light and unobstrusive enough that they can be mounted on a single tripod and set up at the back of a class.