The Chronicle of Higher Education
By JEFFREY R. YOUNG

(From the issue dated November 30, 2007)
Professors around the world could someday podcast their lectures as easily as pushing a button, thanks to a cooperative effort to develop free open-source software led by officials at the University of California at Berkeley.

The university recently started the effort, called OpenCast, and officials at more than 30 colleges and other institutions have joined an e-mail list to discuss the next steps. The fledgling project is far from producing any software, but participants say the discussions indicate that colleges are serious about making coursecasting more mainstream.

"We're hoping schools can jump on board and contribute to it because there's so many different models at different schools" for how to manage podcasts, said Adam Hochman, a product manager at Berkeley's Learning Systems Group.

In many cases, professors who podcast have to fumble with technology tools to make sure their lectures are recorded properly, converted to the right format, and uploaded to a campus server. Many campus officials are now looking to streamline that process and make capturing course audio — and in many cases the PowerPoint slides that go with the lectures — happen with a few simple keyboard clicks.

"I want them to focus on teaching and not the technical details," said Cole W. Camplese, director of Education Technology Services at Pennsylvania State University, who has taken part in the initial discussions for the OpenCast project.

OpenCast will be designed to work with iTunes U, a free service from Apple that many colleges are already using to deliver course recordings, and with Sakai, the open-source course-management system.

For colleges that don't want to wait for the OpenCast software to be built, several companies — including Echo360, Sonic Foundry, and Tegrity — already sell products with similar features. Mr. Hochman said he felt that it would be cheaper in the long run to build a system rather than pay for multiple copies of existing software.

Today Berkeley has 20 classrooms equipped with microphones and software for podcasting, and it plans to have 70 classrooms equipped within the next five years, Mr. Hochman said. That would make it possible for 1,000 courses, or about one-third of Berkeley's offerings, to be recorded and shared free online — though participation by professors is optional.

Some colleges have chosen to buy rather than build software to capture lecture content. Edward J. Evans, interim executive director of teaching and learning technologies at Purdue University, said the university planned to use Echo360 to make its extensive podcasting system more user-friendly. The plan is to install the system in two to five classrooms in January, and to equip 70 more over the summer.

Purdue now has a decidedly low-tech and labor-intensive approach to helping professors podcast: An employee goes around to classrooms and starts and stops recordings, then uploads the lectures.