Audio Recordings/Podcasts
Description: Audio recordings/Podcasts can be downloaded and listened to at the students' convenience.
Best Practices:
- Single podcasts no longer than 30 minutes
- Lengthy topics to be broken into sub-points and recorded separately
- Determine key points; deliver them succinctly and concisely
- For lecture content intended for reuse, avoid references to current events, dates, page numbers, the weather, etc.
Examples of use:
- Course lecture content
- Weekly communication
- Summaries of forums, assignments, blog posts, wikis, etc.
- Audio contributions to assignments or forums by learners.
Programs:
Audacity (free download)
LAME MP3 encoder Instructions (needed to export audio as mp3)
- Audacity Tutorial
- Windows Sound Recorder or Windows Voice Recorder
- Mac Quicktime Player (File > New Audio Recording > Record > Save or Export)
How to do it yourself:
Step One
- Write an outline or script
- Check your microphone for sound quality (external microphones may be borrowed from the BU Library)
- Record yourself
- Save your file as an .mp3, .mp4, or .m4a
- Note 1: File type if small enough (<50MB) does not matter as Moodle has embedded converters for audio and Google (any file size) has players for any file type)
- Note 2: high quality audio like aac or wave is not needed for voice audio and results in very large file sizes
Step Two
Choose Your Deployment Method - place in Moodle (short, specific audio, less than 50MB) or share via Google Drive (longer audio files [lectures] greater than the 50MB Moodle file limit)
- If uploading into your Moodle course, treat the file as any other document you are uploading to an Assignment or Forum, or Link (URL) for larger files
- If sharing from your Google Drive you can easily share the Link (URL) in a Forum or Assignment in which the instructor has enabled online text. See Sharing a Google Drive File in a Moodle Forum or Online Assignment .