With more than 30 million iPods sold since 2001, chances are you've witnessed the invasion of these small digital players and their matching distinctive earphones on campus. Your students, their parents, your alums, their kids, and your faculty and staff have likely seen or used one. Supported by the so-called "net generation" as much in love with cutting-edge technology as with on-demand music, the arrival of this fashionable device at colleges and universities has opened the door to a digital audio revolution in higher ed: podcasting.
Word familiarity is one thing, but let's agree on its definition. According to Wikipedia, the web encyclopedia, podcasting is "a collection of technologies for automatically distributing audio and video programs over the Internet via a publish-and-subscribe model." Unlike earlier online collections of audio or video material, podcasting is automatic, usually through RSS feeds. Independent producers can use it to create self-published, syndicated "radio shows," and it offers a new distribution method for broadcast radio and television programs.
While iPods have definitely played a role in the naming and the development of this new practice, you don't need an iPod to listen to podcasts. Any mp3 player or even a good ol' PC can be used to delve into the wonderful world of podcasting by downloading a free podcast from Apple's iTunes online store or any other podcast directory.
What's in It for Me?
Why take the time to find out more about podcasting? Isn't it just the latest fad in our increasingly technology-driven world?
Podcasting certainly presents some of the characteristics of more ephemeral crazes: It's about a year-and-a-half old but has already attracted a lot of buzz, mainly driven by marketing strategies from Apple, mainstream media, and other key industries. Whether it was planned or not, Duke University (N.C.) got a lot of media coverage of its "iPod first-year experience." In 2004, more than 1,600 freshmen were given brand new iPods to enhance their academic experience. Although the initiative wasn't repeated on the same scale the following year, it resulted in very positive promotional outcomes.
More recently, the announcement of a similar initiative by the School of Education at Drexel University (Pa.) for the new master of science in higher education program--made just days after the launch of iPod video--confirmed the device's magnetic marketing appeal for higher ed.
"The Future of Podcasting," a November 2005 study based on a sample of 4,400 radio listeners and conducted by Bridge Ratings, estimated that 5 million people would have downloaded podcasts in 2005. This year, the forecast is 9.3 million users, and it is expected to reach 62.8 million within five years.
How many of these millions of podcast listeners plan to go to college, make a donation, recruit your graduates, or write an article about your institution? That could be the million-dollar question in a couple of years, one that some corporate players in higher education have begun studying.
Thomson Peterson's introduced podcasting in February 2005 and has yielded promising results: more than 4,000 downloads per month. Executives had been exploring the idea of offering audio and video resources as a way to supplement the online experience, recalls Dan Karleen, Peterson's director of online product delivery. "When podcasting came along, giving people the option of subscribing to receive new programs automatically, the time seemed right to launch a series of podcasts complementing our three core areas: college admission advice, financial aid resources, and standardized test preparation."
Since last September, more and more institutions of higher ed have decided to offer some of their lectures as podcasts to their students. Some, like Purdue University in Indiana, have made their class podcasts available to anybody who would like to download them; others, like the University of Michigan's School of Dentistry, have reserved these class recordings for current students via a private iTunes store. For the past few months, the academic uses of podcasting have been at the center of an animated debate in academia between fans and critics, but the controversy shouldn't overcast what this technology can offer to admissions, marketing, or college relations.
