E3: Invasion of the Podcast People: Podcasting for the Law Librarian

John Mayer, The Center for Computer-Assisted Legal Instruction
Jim Milles, University of Buffalo Law School

The guys made this one easy on me. John already has his synchronized slides and audio up over at CALIopolis. And while Jim added a lot of new detail to his presentation to gear it more toward law librarians of all different types, the big picture was pretty much the same as his session at CALI, which I've already summarized.

God bless you both.

Over at CALIopolis, CALI Executive Director John Mayer has the end of semester survey results from the Legal Education Podcasting Project (LEPP). The project, conducted during the Winter/Spring 2006 semester, involved about 30 law professors who recorded their classroom lectures and/or created weekly audio summaries and disseminated the audio files via a podcast feed.

The surveys, completed by students enrolled in the affected classes, provide some interesting data. Despite the podcasting name (inspired by the Apple iPod), over three quarters of the participants used a personal computer to listen to the podcasts. Only a little over 16% used a portable MP3 player.

Perhaps most notably, there was no real indication that the availabilty of a class podcast resulted in more absences by students. 85.5% of students reported that they attended classes with podcasts as much or more often than their other classes.

I've been podcasting this summer for my online Advanced Legal Research class. The interesting thing about my experience is that the podcasts aren't a supplement to the classroom lecture. They ARE the classroom lecture. Most of my students probably don't even really know what podcasting is, but they seem to have embraced the format nonetheless. I recently posted a discussion question on the class blog soliciting suggestions for how law schools could improve legal research instruction. By and large, the responses seemed to indicate that an online research course was exactly what they wanted, both for its convenience and its reflection of an increasingly electronic dependent world.

And I'd say that bodes well for CALI's podcasting push. Mayer says plans are already under way for LEPP II.

Visit CALIopolis for more of Mayer's analysis of the survey results, or simply download the complete survey results in PDF format.

Podcasting for Fun and Non-Profit: Exploring the Possibilities of New Media
James Milles, Buffalo School of Law

Jim Milles provided an excellent overview of podcasting technology, engaging his audience with questions that turned his session into an hour-long conversation rather than a simple lecture.

Milles first discussed the defining characteristics of podcasts. The first is syndication using RSS feeds. A podcast is essentially just a blog with MP3 enclosures. The second characteristic is portability, the ability to listen to the podcast anywhere using an iPod (or other MP3 player), a PDA, a cell phone, and other portable devices. Statistics indicate that most people still listen to podcasts on their desktop computer, but portability is growing, particularly with young people. The last characteristic is seriality. To have a true podcast, a creator must have commitment and continuity.

Milles then played excerpts from two interviews with law professors involved in CALI's Legal Education Podcasting Project. The first subject said that more and more law schools are using podcasting in classes, and that the practice is seen by some as a possible replacement for traditional legal education. The second subject, however, defended the traditional form of legal education, but said he still saw a place for podcasts in that system. Afterwards, Milles indicated that he believed that while podcasts may not be the best method for classroom instruction, podcasts might be better suited to other class elements.

Podcasts can also serve many different functions for law schools than classroom lectures, such as education, entertainment, public relations, journalism, and community building.

In order for a podcast to truly succeed, it must reach beyond a captive audience. This requires compelling content, acceptable sound quality, and entertainment value. Milles played excerpts from some podcasts that illustrate this formula for success. Screaming Halibut provides entertainment in the form of sketch comedy, CitizenShift provides community information, and participants in Vloggercon illustrate the concept of citizen journalism in which news becomes more of a conversation between journalists and citizens than traditional news reports.

What role can the law school play in this wider conversation? Milles himself produces Check This Out!, a podcast for and about law librarians.

There are plenty of choices for recording and editing software, including Audacity (for recording/editing), GarageBand (for recording/editing), Skype (for making internet phone calls), and Audio Hijack Pro (for capturing computer audio, including Skype calls). Milles also mentioned the practice of "double ending," a recording method in which two Skype users each record their end of a conversation, then sync the recordings later to create a high quality recording.

As for hardware, all you need is a computer, a microphone, a digital recorder, and headphones.

Podcasters can add music to their recordings but avoid copyright hassles with "podsafe" music from providers like the Podsafe Music Network, Magnatune, and MySpace.

Podcasting communities have recently arisen in which members share content with one another, trade advice, and cross-promote one another's podcasts. Two such communities are Rogic Podcast Conglomerate and the Rabble Podcast Network.

Milles would to see a conglomerate/community in legal education podcasting. As illustrated by the Long Tail, we may be a narrow interest, but everyone involved can share information easily thanks to technologies like podcasting.

Milles ended by asking the audience a couple of questions to ponder. First, will a law school podcasting community emerge? And second, is there a broader audience for law school podcasting? Legal podcasting could very well be seen as a public service. This may take the form of something as simple as a podcast from a law school clinic or as ambitious as a means for providing open access to legal knowledge (not just legal scholarship).

Update: Jim's Keynote slides are now available over at Check This Out!

Automated Media
Tom Ryan, Rutgers University

Ryan and Rutgers have developed a (cheap) method for automating the production of classroom audio and video recording. The school's previous system had several problems: costly staffing for nights and weekends, poor audio, and no method for easily converting media from one format to another. When developing a new system, they needed an inexpensive solution because New Jersey was in the midst of a severe budget crisis.

They had the following hardware (network camera) requirements:
1) Data/Power over single cable
2) Internal microphone on camera BUT with external connection
3) High quality video
4) Lightweight
5) Reliable, leader in video hardware
6) Synchronized audio and video

Ryan chose: AXIS 230 MPEG-2 Camera

This camera (approximately $1500 each) is an all-in-one box that requires no other equipment (and thus eliminates additional hardware costs).

As for the project's software requirements:
1) Automated recording
2) Automated post processing
3) Including open/end credits
4) Ability to generate podcasts
5) Course management system integration
6) DVD generation

Ryan chose: Apple's free Darwin Streaming Server and a combination of other free tools he has collectively dubbed Completely Automated Media System (CAMS)

Darwin handles the web-streaming of the completed AV files, while CAMS is a four-part system for actually creating those AV files: Scheduling, Capturing, Processing, and Posting. Scheduling achieved solely through PHP and MySQL (using phpMyAdmin). Capturing, processing, and post is done all in one step using Wget, a free tool for retrieving files.

Ryan and his team still intend to develop a better scheduler interface, create a computer presenter interface (i.e., an interactive whiteboard, or something similar), and implement some method of Pan-Tilt-Zoom integration.

Podcasting Law School Courses: The Classcaster Experiment
Debra Cohen, Southern New England School of Law
Gregory Lee Ogden, Pepperdine University School of Law
Andrea L. Johnson, California Western School of Law

All of the speakers in this session participated in CALI's Classcaster podcasting project. The session was designed for them to report on their experiences and the feedback they received from students.

Speaking first was Professor Cohen. She used podcasts of class lectures in some classes and summaries in others. According to survey responses, her students loved it. Most importantly, they reported that they didn't worry about catching every detail because they always knew they could listen again later, therefore they could pay closer attention in class without worrying about taking precise notes at the same time.

Prof. Cohen said that creating an audio recording of in-class lectures was easy enough to do technically, but that dialogues were difficult to pick up in larger classes. This was problematic because these dialogues were essential in Socratic method classes. Because of this, her podcast for larger classes only featured audio summaries, not the actual class lectures.

For future classes, Prof. Cohen plans to produce required podcasts episodes that students must listen to BEFORE class. These episodes will cover basic information, while class time will be devoted to more advanced discussion. These episodes will also include answers to assigned questions from previous classes so that in-class time doesn't need to be devoted to them.

Next up was Professor Ogden. He said his podcast really helped students who had to miss classes for legitimate reasons (e.g., mudslides, moot court trips). It also assisted in student understanding of complex areas of laws. Auditory learners really benefited from the feed, but he believes it strongly reinforced ideas for ALL types of learners. At the very least, a podcast of a lecture provided a huge advantage over simply borrowing another student's notes.

Many question why students would still come to class if the lecture is available on the web. According to Prof. Ogden, the podcast is not a substitute for class, and he still requires classroom attendance. He makes it a point to emphasize to students the professionalism inherent in showing up for class regularly.

Prof. Ogden said many of his students wanted to know when their other professors would start podcasting, too.

Prof. Johnson spoke last. She had never blogged or podcasted before and originally planned to use the course podcast only for class summaries. That all changed soon enough.

Teaching Administrative Law, a stereotypically dry subject, Prof. Johnson likes to spice up her class by focusing on the application of legal concepts in the real world. For this particular semester, the class incorporated the Katrina disaster into an ongoing course project. As controversy surrounding the governmental response to the storm swelled, however, it became difficult to keep up with widening scope of issue with the limited amount of available class time.

To keep up, she began using the podcast to expand and reflect on in-class discussion. She also included additional factual background information, including phone interviews with Katrina evacuees and government officials.

This morning I attended Greg Schwartz's web seminar on podcasting. Greg provided a lot of great information on finding and listening to podcasts. One of my colleagues joined me for the session, and she took a hefty amount of notes. (Hopefully this means I won't be the only librarian in-house listening to podcasts for much longer.)

Greg will present the second part of his seminar next Wednesday morning at 8 a.m PDT. While today's session focused on listening to podcasts, next week's installment will cover the basics of podcast creation. This looks to have all the real money information for those of us already brainstorming ideas for podcasts of our own.

To register for next week's session, visit the SirsiDynix Institute website. Today's program should be archived and available for download soon