Providing added value to lecture materials to an iPod generation

Lectures can be complex events that take various forms and serve various purposes (Exley, 2001 and Isaccs, 1992). However, within most academic lectures there will be islands of key concepts and knowledge sharing and development. This seminar will reflect on the experience of one academic and how subject specific concepts were captured simply as 'audio notes', stored and made available for reuse by the student cohort. Others have discussed how audio recordings of entire lectures distributed via University networks have been found to be highly popular and beneficial to students with minimum impact on reducing lecture attendance (Williams and Fardon, 2005). The streaming of 'audio lectures' has been illustrated not to impact on attendance (Russell and Mattick, 2005), but it can be argued that such reassuring findings may be dependent upon specific, local conditions. Edited e-videos lecture resource has been shown to increase student motivation, (Law, 2005), but at the expense of academic time, in terms of development. In this session we argue that the concept of audio notes (selected moments and ideas captured during lectures for reconsideration) potentially offers a highly valuable approach that can be adopted by other academics who retain the lecture as a focal point to their teaching and learning, however with minimum impact on the academic time for development. This session will consider, from various stakeholder perspectives, the value of using multimedia to heighten engagement and participation in lectures and in post-lecture learning. Ideas developed during the session, using interactive role play techniques, will be compared to the actual perspectives and experience of three stakeholders. Exley, K. (2001). "Key aspects of teaching and learning in science and engineering”, in Fry, H., Ketteridge, S. & Marshall, S. (Eds) Handbook for teaching in Higher Education enhancing academic practice. Kogan Page: London, pp 265-288 Issac, G. (1994). Lecturing practices and note-taking purposes. Studies in Higher Education, 19, No 2, pp 203-216 Law, E. (2005). Promoting understanding using a virtual learning environment, International Conference on Engineering Education, Gliwice, Poland, volume 1, pp 806-811, 2005 Russell, P and Mattick, K. (2005). Does streaming of a lecture result in empty seats, in the proceedings of ALT-C 2005: Exploring the frontiers of e-learning - borders, outposts and migration, Manchester, UK, 2005 Williams, J and Fardon, M. (2005) On demand internet transmitted lecture recordings: attempting to enhance and support the lecture experience, in the proceedings of ALT-C 2005: Exploring the frontiers of e-learning - borders, outposts and migration, Manchester, UK, 2005