a major fault of podcasts
If I reach a web page - either text or also with pictures, graphs, ..., I can look it over very quickly. I can skip paragraphs or more, and quickly see whether or not I want to peruse it more thoroughly. If the web page really isn't what I want, I can likely assure myself of this in a minute or less.
What about the podcast? I do a search and find a podcast - the title hints that it will be useful, and the usual teaser sentence or two doesn't do more than that.
So I need to listen to the thing! It may be 45 minutes, or maybe an hour and a half. I listen much slower than I read! :-) I can't even speed up the blasted thing*, and often can't skip ahead. When I can skip ahead, I can't see anything about what I'm skipping.
So how long does it take for me to find out that the 90 minute podcast isn't helpful? It could well be 10 or 20 minutes.
That's 10 or 20 times longer than for a text/graphics web page!
That's inefficient!
Am I the only one who has this reaction? I must be quite alone as I see that Connect is replete with podcasts.
Many of them look interesting - but I don't have the time/energy to sample a dozen or two podcasts if it's going to take me 2-4 hours. I can look at a dozen or two web pages in 15 minutes or so.
What do you think?
*Speeding up can work. I have a Pogo Products Radio Your Way LX (they are unfortunately no longer available) which has a few speeded up audio playback modes, and I find that 30% or so speeding up doesn't interfere with comprehension, and is very valuable. It doesn't do the chipmunk frequency shift, it appears to time slice. Even with playing at a 1.5 rate, a fair amount is till understandable. It would be great to have this type of speed up available via a "speed control" for listening to podcasts. However I suspect that a text transcript would be even more efficient for me!
Great comment, Henry, and not the first time I've heard such a concern raised about longer podcasts.
It's often difficult to ascertain the nuggest of knowledge or "take-aways" from a given podcast lecture. This is part of the reason EDUCAUSE has begun to publish more refined, directed pieces for our podcast stream. I'd like to direct you to EDUCAUSE Now, our new monthly podcast covering studies, events, conversations, and topics relevent to higher ed IT.
You can find our EDUCAUSE Now podcast at: http://connect.educause.edu/now
The longer podcasts you are referring to are usually raw speeches from various EDUCAUSE conferences and serve those who cannot attend the conference but still have an interest in hearing the keynotes..
It takes a much smaller amount of time for me to determine if i want to listen to an entire podcast, usually 5 minutes or less. One big aspect is the technical quality. If the recording is bad to where I have to work to listen to it, I don't. And there are a *lot* that fall into that category. The other major criteria is how engaging the podcast is, which usually boils down to whoever the presenter is. If I'm bored in 5 minutes, I'l be bored at 30. But if I'm engaged and entertained, a topic I thought would be interesting usually is.
Good point. Sometimes the keynotes we record are in less than favorable audio conditions. I try to clean them up as much as possible and continue to find new ways to make them more listenable. I'd also like to point you to our more produced pieces, such as EDUCAUSE Now: http://connect.educause.edu/now