Listen to the whole programme (20 mins, 9MB)

Our final post for ESRC Social Science Week is an edited version of all the clips you may have listened to this week, presented as a single file and programme. So this covers the whole list of topics for the week:

• Getting started with online audio
• Research uses of audio
• Teaching and learning uses of audio
• Marketing and news uses of audio
• Producing audio

We hope that you have enjoyed this brief introduction to potential of audio for those of you working in the Social Sciences.

... and finally

If you would like to give us any feedback on the Social Science Voices project, why not e-mail us at: sosig-blog@sosig.ac.uk

Listen to today's programme

Welcome to Social Science Voices brought to you by SOSIG, the Social Science Information Gateway. This is our final post for ESRC Social Science Week and today we will be giving you a few pointers about producing your own online audio.

This is not a step-by-step guide to the mechanics of producing audio content. There are plenty of these available online, as well as, in-depth discussions of sound editing, which microphone to use and the seemingly inevitable quest for the right intro music.

Radio: a source of inspiration

Today we feature an interview with Romesh Vaitilingam, a media consultant who has worked closely with the ESRC, the Royal Economic Society and number of academic research centres including the Centre for Market and Public Organisation.

He suggests that those providing audio online can learn from traditional radio in terms of trying to make podcasts that are programmes and resisting the temptation to plug-in and rant. After all some of the most downloaded podcasts are from media outlets like Radio 4, who are not afraid to discuss serious issues.

Simple touches such as using a signature tune, varying the format to include interviews, conversations or panel discussions and keeping the show to a length that listeners can consume easily, can make a show seem very professional.

Research integrity

One of the reasons academics may turn to producing their own audio content is a fear of misrepresentation of their work by journalists who do not understand it. While this is a legitimate concern, it may be worth consulting sources such as the ESRC Communications Toolkit for advice in this area.

Reconciling the precise language and occasional pieces of jargon used by researchers, with the need to communicate beyond the academic community, is a balancing act. Thinking about your potential audience, the limitations an audio format can impose and trying to explain things as though you were talking to a friend down the pub, rather than for an abstract in a peer reviewed journal, may bring improved results.

Learning from others

As well as, producing this week of audio advice on Social Science Voices, we have also been involved with another project called Economics in Action. This tries to present research information in the form of short interviews with academics, aimed at encouraging the next generation of researchers by relating such findings to everyday issues.

It is possible to present research information in a form that is accessible, but still retains academic integrity. Audio and podcasting presents an opportunity to do just that and perhaps one of the best ways to learn more about it, is simply to listen to as many other podcasts as possible, and see which ones work for you.

... and finally

If you would like to give us any feedback on the Social Science Voices project, why not e-mail us at: sosig-blog@sosig.ac.uk

We hope that you have enjoyed this overview of the possibilities that online audio presents.

Listen to today's programme

Welcome to Social Science Voices brought to you by SOSIG, the Social Science Information Gateway. This is the fourth of our posts for ESRC Social Science Week and today we will be giving you an introduction to marketing and news uses of online audio.

The key to producing good audio content for news purposes, is to provide short, upbeat sound stories, using accessible language that will be picked up outside the academic world, providing another delivery mechanism for your media strategy.
Learning from others

A number of US Universities have been using podcasts as a way of delivering this audio content. The University of Florida provides a dedicated audio news channel that caters to an internal audience by providing weekly campus updates, but also engages a wider audience with short summaries of research based stories.

Another potential approach more suited research centres or academic departments, is to provide commentaries on current events from an academic viewpoint. The UNICEF podcast provides updates on their work in audio form, while the Economist produced a series on the The World in 2006 featuring interviews with experts.

Marketing an Institution using audio

At the Institutional level, podcasting is starting to be used by UK Universities as well. The University of Warwick has produced a series of podcasts of public events, focussed on popular themes. Topics that have been covered include, the Iranian nuclear crisis, the intelligent design versus evolution debate and business research into the dismissal of football managers.

While other institutions, such as the University of Portsmouth will be using podcasting as way of recruiting students, providing promotional videos about University life.

Topical and subject based

In terms of a subject based approach, one example is the Biz/ed podcast which examines an item that has been in the news from a business and economics perspective.

This has been turned into an educational resource with the addition of interactive questions, for those who visit the web site. This means that after listening to a short item on the business implications of weather forecasting, students can be assessed whether they understand to what extent should a business rely on forecasting (including weather forecasts) in business decision-making?

... and finally

If you would like to give us any feedback on the Social Science Voices project, why not e-mail us at: sosig-blog@sosig.ac.uk

Do join us again next time when we will be talking about producing your own audio.

Listen to today's programme

Welcome to Social Science Voices brought to you by SOSIG, the Social Science Information Gateway. This is the third of our posts for ESRC Social Science Week and today we will be giving you an introduction to teaching and learning uses of online audio.

Teaching and Learning applications seem to be the most obvious practical way of making use of the potential of online audio. From the famed free iPod for every new student at Duke University, via the pioneering Stanford on iTunes initiative, to the new iTunesU service, Apple have led the way in encouraging the delivery of lectures to students.

The Apple approach does have its pros and cons, while some are cautious about providing lectures as downloads at all. Audio can support teaching and learning beyond the lecture format and we explore these issues by talking to someone experimenting with audio.

Issues about providing lecture downloads

Providing audio files of lectures can be convienient and open doors for users with some disabilities, but it raises other issues. Should lectures be archived and preserved? Or will the next years lecture be different from this years, rendering archiving pointless? Will digital distribution mean that academics will be more cautious about floating new ideas in the lecture hall?

Some academics have concerns that providing lectures online will decrease lecture attendance, which has prompted more in-class assessment at some institutions. Others point out that just the audio of lectures may not be enough for students, as slides, graphs and data may have been integral to the presentation.

Uses of audio beyond the lecture

The University of Bournemouth’s Learning Design Studio have produced a guide to podcasting including a number of uses beyond delivering lectures to students. One example of providing enriched course content, is an Economics Network project where short commentaries on topical issues supported classroom learning.

The Spoken Word Services web site at Glasgow Caledonian University is currently engaged in two projects of direct relevance to Social Scientists, where archival collections are being used to support teaching Economics and Social Policy courses. While their collaborative efforts are also exploring the technological possibilites of audio annotation, helping students to organise, analyse and share audio resources.

Learning from practice

The main part of the audio show accompanying this post, is an interview with Andy Ramsden, of the Learning Technology Support Service at the University of Bristol. Andy has been working with academics using audio in a variety of formats, from straight forward lecture delivery, to providing an audio newsletter and topical commentaries.

Andy talks about his research, how he evaluated it and the broader lessons for using audio in teaching and learning. You can find out more about Andy’s work from his blog and explore the links on this page about some of the topics covered in the interview.

... and finally

If you would like to give us any feedback on the Social Science Voices project, why not e-mail us at: sosig-blog@sosig.ac.uk

Do join us again next time when we will be talking about making use of online audio for marketing and news purposes.

Listen to today's programme

Welcome to Social Science Voices brought to you by SOSIG, the Social Science Information Gateway. This is the second of our posts for ESRC Social Science Week and today we will be giving you an introduction to research uses of online audio.

Sound has formed part of the research experience in the Social Sciences for many years, from recording interviews for qualitative research, via anthropological recordings from far flung lands to sound archives of historical significance.

Audio collections are now starting to make their way online, and researchers are taking advantage of the increasing ease of creating and distrubuting audio to engage with each other in debate and to open up the process of research dissemination.

Subject based research resources

In Government and Politics, the bizarre obsession of US Presidents to tape conversations at the centre of power, has created a unique research resource in the form of the White House Tapes, which is in the process of being made available online.

While organisations such as C-SPAN have a remit to cover the minutiae of the modern day political process, they also have an impressive archive of recordings, with perspectives on key political events, including perhaps the most notorious sound archive of all, President Nixon’s Watergate tapes.

Meanwhile in law, the Oyez Project has the noble aim of providing a complete archive of Supreme Court hearings from 1955. All audio from 1995 onwards is included in the project and the Oyez Supreme Court Podcast can keep you up-to-date with the latest releases from this research archive.

In other subjects, cultural geographers have been making use of audio in the Memoryscape project to tell the tale of those who lives have been entwined with the River Thames. While anthropologists have provided resources on American Folklife and Memory, which covers topics ranging from Omaha Indian Music, via quiltmaking to Halloween.

Researchers talking with researchers

Lowering the barriers to audio creation, has enabled members of the academic community to start talking, debating and sharing with each other online. Freed from a soundbite culture and a mainstream media agenda, researchers can engage with each other on issues of substance.

Geographers interested in geospatial technology can enjoy A Very Spatial Podcast, with a mix of news and event information, as well as, detailed discussions of a different topic in each episode.

The extended interview format is popular with academic popdcasters, with shows such as Radio Economics or Shrink Rap Radio, offering programmes that feature a single guest in conversation about their research and academic work.

Research dissemination and discussion

Audio is a powerful tool as a way of making research events reach a larger audience. Social Science Week 2005 saw a broadcast from the Wellbeing in Developing Countries research group, on the topic of Eradicating Poverty: how to make aid more effective chaired by Jonathan Dimbleby.

Special events are not the only opportunity for spreading the word about research, with regular academic seminars being another way of doing so. The Center for Economic Performance and the Oxford Internet Institute are among those offering seminars online, increasingly in video as well as audio formats.

The future may even lead to the routine broadcasting of academic conferences, which some institutions are trying already. Although at the moment, it is more likely to see podcasts from podcasting conferences about podcasting, like the Duke Symposium in 2005.

... and finally

If you would like to give us any feedback on the Social Science Voices project, why not e-mail us at: sosig-blog@sosig.ac.uk

Do join us again next time when we will be talking about teaching and learning uses for audio resources.

Listen to today's programme

Welcome to Social Science Voices brought to you by SOSIG, the Social Science Information Gateway. This is the first of our posts for ESRC Social Science Week and today we will be giving you a brief introduction to getting started with online audio.

Hasn’t audio been available online for years?

Sound has been part of the online experience for almost as long as the Internet has been in existence, but in the last couple of years there has been a massive explosion in the amount of audio available online.

You may have used the BBC Radio Player to catch up on radio shows you have missed. Perhaps you’ve heard about the Apple iPod and the rise of music downloads or you may have heard that academic publications such as Nature, have started producing their own radio shows.

So what’s changed?

Most of you will have visited the Social Science Voices web site and listened to the audio file accompanying this post at your computer using a media player that plugs in to your web browser.

But imagine this. Instead of having to pick up audio content from a number of different web sites and revisiting them each time they published a new programme, that somehow those new programmes would come directly to you.

This is now possible, thanks to the advent of Podcasting, which has revolutionised the way audio content is distributed online.

What is Podcasting?

While debates may rage over the exact definition of Podcasting depending upon who you talk to, essentially it is a way of distributing media files (audio or video) over the Internet by subscribing to a webfeed. (More definitions are available here here here or here).

It has led to a radio revival as it lowers the barriers to producing an audio broadcast and increases the chance of getting an audience for it. Mainstream media outlets, such as the BBC, are using podcasting to distribute their content and the most downloaded podcast on the planet is produced by the comedian Ricky Gervais for the Guardian.

Educational Technologists are exploring the potential of podcasting and key readings include 7 things you should know about podcasting and Podcasting and Education, both from EDUCAUSE and a University of Missouri paper on Podcasting and Vodcasting in higher education.

What do you need to start making use of podcasts?

Well, you do not need an iPod. Podcasts can be downloaded and played on a normal computer, an mp3 player or even a mobile phone. You will need some software that will enable you to subscribe to receive podcasts. One example is a piece of software called Juice, which is available for Windows or Macs, but there are many more.

Once your software is installed, you can explore the directory of podcasts that often comes with them and start listening to programmes. Or you can visit online podcast directories such as, Podcast Alley, Podcast.net or the Education Podcast Network.

You can easily add new podcasts as well, for example, if you would like to receive the rest of the programmes in this series on Social Science Voices, just click on the podcast link and copy the web address into your podcasting software.

You will now automatically receive new programmes when they are published and you can listen to them on your PC or transfer them to the audio player of your choice.

What are the potential uses of online audio for the Social Sciences?

Academics are already making use of this opportunity to make lectures available to students, for example using the iTunes U service for Universities and Colleges, which was trialled by Stanford University in the States.

They are also helping their own research by using audio to talk with each other and keep in touch with the latest developments in their field, whether they are Economists, Sociologists or Psychologists.

And academics are also using audio to engage with the public at large and presenting their research findings to wider audiences. For example, our companion web site Economics in Action, which uses interviews with academics about their research to show how Economics is relevant to everyday life and to help encourage the next generation of researchers.

... and finally

During the rest of the week we will be tackling the topic of online audio in much more detail, looking specifically at using audio for marketing and news purposes, for use as a research resource and in the sphere of teaching and learning.

If you would like to give us any feedback on the Social Science Voices project, why not e-mail us at: sosig-blog@sosig.ac.uk

Do join us again next time when we will be talking about how to make use of online audio for research purposes.