What is with professors that won't podcast?

[78222]

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What is the argument made against podcasting? I think it is great. It gives us the chance to listen from home and replay if we don't understand something. Yet some professors and departments at my school refuse to participate in the podcasting system. Has your school had this problem? I don't know what justification they are using for their refusal (since I dont go to class).

 

[inside_edition]

What is the argument made against podcasting? I think it is great. It gives us the chance to listen from home and replay if we don't understand something. Yet some professors and departments at my school refuse to participate in the podcasting system. Has your school had this problem? I don't know what justification they are using for their refusal (since I dont go to class).

i know what you mean. i hate it when institutions bully around individuals like this.

 

[MattD]

What is the argument made against podcasting?...

...I dont go to class.

This is the argument they make against podcasting 🙂 I'm not saying I agree with them, but I promise you it's an attendance issue. Why don't you get a friend who does go to class to bring a recorder and give you the tape?

 

[megadon]

I think I've heard a couple arguments, and I am deffinitely not saying I agree with them.

1. It's an intellectual property issue. The professors have packaged their knowledge for our education, and podcasting opens up the possibility it will be available for others on the internet. So at our school, its done on an individual professor basis, and their is a password required to download.

2. This one is even dumber, their presentation (powerpoint and noteset) is so good it stands on its own.

 

[mules05]

The excuses thrown around by faculty at my school are usually "intellectual property" and "I just don't feel comfortable posting this." However, if you actually talk to them, it seems to be that they're a little bitter about the lack of attendance at their lectures. While I don't think this is an acceptable reason to withhold learning materials, it' definitely understandable, especially since most of these people would rather be with patients, in their labs, or really anywhere other than lecturing to 20 half-asleep med students.

 

[racerx]

Where I go, the only time they really don't videotape and/or podcast a lecture is if there is a patient panel or any potential HIPAA violations, and that is few and far between. That is the reason we were given.

Oh yeah, they won't tape review sessions either. . .never given a reason for that though.

 

[Doctor Bagel]

Yep, it's all related to bitterness about low attendance. The intellectual property justification doesn't have any emotional merit -- sure, it means they have the right to withhold the recordings, but it doesn't mean they're not being petty by doing so.

Honestly, since so few people go to lecture and since the recorded lecture gives you the same experience as the real lecture -- face it, med school lectures aren't designed to be interactive -- why not just record the lectures in advance and skip the whole classroom thing?

 

[NonTradMed]

A friend was talking about this previously and said just as much. What's the difference between lecturing to a room full of students and recording that lecture and having that room of students watch it at room at their own pace? It's a matter of ego for some people (to 'see' people in class) and for others, they're old school and can't think 'outside the box'....ie if students don't show up for attendence, they must be playing hooky and not listening to lectures and/or studying.

I took some bio classes before I started med school (nontrad here), and there was this one professor that had excellent powerpoint notes but she refused to put it online because she wanted a full classroom filled with notetaking students. The end result? I didn't learn a thing during classtime b/c I was too busy copying down her copious notes. All I ended up with was a sore hand and really sloppy notes (she raced through her slides). Professors like that are like luddites that refuse to utilize the technology in front of them, choosing to do things the hard way. And the students get the short end of the stick.

 

[inside_edition]

if the argument is mostly an attendance issue, then what happened to democracy and the US being so free?

 

[inside_edition]

I took some bio classes before I started med school (nontrad here), and there was this one professor that had excellent powerpoint notes but she refused to put it online because she wanted a full classroom filled with notetaking students. The end result? I didn't learn a thing during classtime b/c I was too busy copying down her copious notes. All I ended up with was a sore hand and really sloppy notes (she raced through her slides). Professors like that are like luddites that refuse to utilize the technology in front of them, choosing to do things the hard way. And the students get the short end of the stick.

in other words, you're paying them to treat you bad. it's time that we, as students, demand our rights as customers.

 

[Tired Pigeon]

I had one professor tell me, "If I have to be there, then so do you."👎

 

[dilated]

I usually just pretend I went to their classes and give them really low scores on the eval. I figure by natural selection we can slowly start pushing them out of the lecturer pool when the administration thinks they suck. 😛

 

[megadon]

our neuro class (starts next week) solved the attendence problem with another solution. Quizzes, I don't think they are voluntary, and you have to be there to take them. Guess what, that means just like good ole gross lectures, I will see all the happy smiles of the classmates who don't go to class twice a week. Upshot, you get to see friends you only saw every six weeks, down shot, they try and take my seat.

 

[Doctor Bagel]

our neuro class (starts next week) solved the attendence problem with another solution. Quizzes, I don't think they are voluntary, and you have to be there to take them. Guess what, that means just like good ole gross lectures, I will see all the happy smiles of the classmates who don't go to class twice a week. Upshot, you get to see friends you only saw every six weeks, down shot, they try and take my seat.

Lame. We had quizzes in gross anatomy, too, which is especially silly since gross is a class where lecture has very little value for almost anyone. Our lectures frequently consisted of professors just pointing to things on pictures and naming them -- why can't I do that on my own time? Anyway, the quizzes were essentially free points because they were really easy and everyone discussed/looked up the answers. Also, there were 66 questions for a total of 60 points, leaving the extra 6 as bonuses.

I hope your neuro quizzes aren't hard. 😱

 

[Doctor Bagel]

I took some bio classes before I started med school (nontrad here), and there was this one professor that had excellent powerpoint notes but she refused to put it online because she wanted a full classroom filled with notetaking students. The end result? I didn't learn a thing during classtime b/c I was too busy copying down her copious notes. All I ended up with was a sore hand and really sloppy notes (she raced through her slides). Professors like that are like luddites that refuse to utilize the technology in front of them, choosing to do things the hard way. And the students get the short end of the stick.

Yeah, not sharing powerpoints actually hurts the students who go to class almost as much as the students who don't go. With that professor, it also sounds like a really poor use of powerpoints. Those powerpoints might have been good as self-learning tools, but they obviously weren't designed well for the lecture.

 

[megadon]

Anyway, the quizzes were essentially free points because they were really easy and everyone discussed/looked up the answers. Also, there were 66 questions for a total of 60 points, leaving the extra 6 as bonuses.

I hope your neuro quizzes aren't hard. 😱

lucky bast#$@. There were no extra credit opportunities in our first year. However, our gross lectures were extremely useful, except for how they minimized the importance of knowing lymph nodes/system in lecture, and then was 25% of the test.

neuro has the reputation for completely sucking, so I am not expecting the quizzes to be a free ride, although I do expect them to be significantly easier than the test.

 

[deleted77919]

Most of our professors hide their bitterness and some even take it in stride. One professor started out his lecture: "Good morning and everyone, and I also want to say good morning to all of our viewers listening in from home."

👍

 

[Dookter]

Yep, it's all related to bitterness about low attendance. The intellectual property justification doesn't have any emotional merit -- sure, it means they have the right to withhold the recordings, but it doesn't mean they're not being petty by doing so.

Honestly, since so few people go to lecture and since the recorded lecture gives you the same experience as the real lecture -- face it, med school lectures aren't designed to be interactive -- why not just record the lectures in advance and skip the whole classroom thing?

Agreed 100%. My school does record everything and streams it over the internet, postcasts, etc. But for this block they are requiring us to attend tons of events. What is ironic is that they are the most pointless events--the ones we would normally watch from home at 2X speed to save time since a useful fact comes out like once every 5 minutes. Oh well.

 

[Dookter]

Most of our professors hide their bitterness and some even take it in stride. One professor started out his lecture: "Good morning and everyone, and I also want to say good morning to all of our viewers listening in from home."

👍

Ha ha, we have lecturers that do that. What is even better is when we have lecturers that actually tell us what they will ask on questions and tell us to not tell everyone who is not in class. It like, "DUH, this is being videotaped!!!" It looks especially stupid when I watch a lecture from home and hear a teacher say that stuff.

 

[logos]

Here it mostly seems to be professors that didnt know that all the lectures are podcast until a few min before. It seems that there (somewhat understandable) reaction to being told 5min before their one lecture for the whole year that they are going to be recorded is to just take the "safe" route and say no.

 

[NonTradMed]

I think the problem is that the professors are mostly from an era when students had to hand take notes. Heck, when I was an undergrad back in the late 90's, we still had to take notes by hand---and our school was pretty good with technology. My undergrad only started streaming popular lectures around 2000 or so.

My med school is pretty good. They now video stream all lectures and also have a separate audio podcast plus transcribed notes. Of course, with the volume of information we're responsible for, I think the little extras are a must in order for us to absorb everything.

 

[soeagerun2or]

I think I've heard a couple arguments, and I am deffinitely not saying I agree with them.

1. It's an intellectual property issue. The professors have packaged their knowledge for our education, and podcasting opens up the possibility it will be available for others on the internet. So at our school, its done on an individual professor basis, and their is a password required to download.

2. This one is even dumber, their presentation (powerpoint and noteset) is so good it stands on its own.

The IP argument is BS since they're just stealing knowledge from article and textbooks and more than likely don't cite it.

The real story is that they're worried that they're job will evaporate in the next 5-10 years as pod-casting will replace live lectures and inevitably schools will share the best lectures. As such students will have a cadre of lectures from the best lecturers to choose from rather than the tired old professors who only teach because it's revenue for the department and can't do anything else.

 

[Mr. Freeze]

The IP argument is BS since they're just stealing knowledge from article and textbooks and more than likely don't cite it.

The real story is that they're worried that they're job will evaporate in the next 5-10 years as pod-casting will replace live lectures and inevitably schools will share the best lectures. As such students will have a cadre of lectures from the best lecturers to choose from rather than the tired old professors who only teach because it's revenue for the department and can't do anything else.

x2.

Like Good Will Hunting, they ain't telling me anything I can't go look up myself. It's not like they're up there composing music and we're all pirating it as they write it. I'm not really so much interested in what they have to say as I am interested in what they have to say that will be on the test.

 

[Doctor Bagel]

I don't think doing away with lectures would necessarily make most of the professors obsolete. For one, the vast majority of our lecturers are primarily researchers and are just required to come in and do x many lectures, which they generally resent and sometimes do a cr@ppy job at. So the recorded lectures frees them to do what they want to do.

Also, synthesizing the material in an understandable way is still an incredibly useful thing for a professor to do. If a professor prepares great notes and powerpoints, they're still teaching the students without having to give a lecture. Unfortunately, lots suck at that, too, but that's another story.

Third, we're still going to need people available to answer questions. So I think of it more as a shift in teaching responsibility instead of an elimination of the teacher.

 

[tacojohn]

if the argument is mostly an attendance issue, then what happened to democracy and the US being so free?

Huh?