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Evaluating Undergraduates' attitude towards the use of podcast for learning selected Educational Technology concepts

Technology has revolutionized in higher education over the years and it has greatly improved the teaching and learning process. Most especially, digital native students are getting bored with the conventional lecture method and are approaching learning from a very different perspective. In the view of this, students’ levels of engagement tend to be low, which may cause their learning to suffer and at the end affect their academic performance (Sun, Martinez & Seli, 2014). It is of high importance that the conventional lectures should be supplemented with online innovative tools like podcast which can stimulate and arouse students’ interest to learn effectively which will greatly influence their academic performance positively. Most students use their mobile devices for entertainment purpose (listening to music, chatting on social media sites) which distracts them from learning. If there are educational/lecture podcast that they can download to their mobile devices, it may improve their study habits and positively influence their performances in the courses they offer. Since podcast gives learners an anywhere anytime learning experience using their various mobile devices. Students’ attitudes are the good indicators of their approach to the educational technologies and these approaches differentiate users from each other (Graff, Davies & McNorton, 2004). Studies on students’ attitude towards the use of podcast began to appear in the literature in 2006 (Chester, Buntine, Hammond & Atkinson, 2011). Studies have found out that positive attitude towards using podcast can lead to students' better learning (Bolliger, Supanakorn & Boggs, 2010; Fernandez, Simo & Salan, 2009; Heilesen, 2010; Oliver, 2005; Walls, Kucsera, Walker et.al, 2010). Evans (2008) reported that traditional learners found the use of podcast satisfactory, effective, and engaging. Podcast can be used to supplement the teaching and learning of any course in higher education not just Educational Technology concepts used in this study and a number of studies have proved that and they include: astronomy (Gay, Bemrose-Fetter, Bracey & Cain, 2007), education (Walls et al., 2010), information systems (Laing & Wootton, 2007), information and communications technology (Evans, 2008), engineering (Berger, 2007), Health sciences (Lane, 2006), medicine (Petrovic, Kennedy, Chang & Waycott, 2008) and so on. Students have reported a range of reasons for using podcasts which includes picking up missing information, revisiting complex material, working through material at one’s own pace, and catching up on a lecture that was missed (Brookes, 2010; Chester et al., 2011). However, examination review is the most frequently reported reason for using podcasts (Copley, 2007; Gosper, McNeill, Woo et al., 2007; Janossy, 2007; Laing & Wootton, 2007; Williams & Fardon, 2007). A number of studies on students’ positive attitude towards the use of podcast have been established in literature. Brookes (2010) reported that students’ attitude were positive toward the use of podcast. Carvalho, Cruz and Moura (2008) in their study reported that students’ attitude towards the use of podcast was positive as only one student hated podcasts. Most of the students preferred to listen to podcasts than rather reading the content from a book. Farshi and Mohammadi (2013) conducted a study on the use of podcasts in effective teaching of Vocabulary: Learners' Attitudes, Motivations and Limitations and their findings revealed that learners had positive attitude towards using podcast for learning English vocabularies. In a study by Heilesen (2010), it was concluded that students had positive attitude towards podcast and reports of rejection of podcast were very rare. Gribbins (2007) found that students had a positive attitude towards using podcasts for online classes. Shaw (2009) found that student attitudes toward podcasts were positive.

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