Canadian healthcare - Podcasts for medical students | "Brain development, mental health and addiction - a podcast series for undergraduate medical education"

Title of the article: "Brain development, mental health and addiction: a podcast series for undergraduate medical education"

Authors: Colla J. MacDonald (Faculty of Education - University of Ottawa); Hugh Kellam (Ontario Telemedicine Network); Catherine Peirce (The Association of Faculties of Medicine of Canada)

In this journal article, the authors and their teams produced high-quality, exhaustively researched podcasts about addiction for first and second year medical students. They then took those podcasts to focus groups and - again exhaustively - analyzed the reviews of the first podcasts resulting from the focus groups. The findings are intuitive - but only if you think a lot about what constitutes successful learning - which I appreciate, as a podcast is not an end in and of itself but usually aims to do something more like entertain, intrigue...or educate.

Essentially, the article suggest that the best podcasts are about 10 minutes long, involve a strong personal story that communicates concepts or contexts (instead of reference material like definitions or terms). A good podcast will use music (real music, not computer sounds) to organize the audio into segments, and should be able to exist as a stand-alone product AND as one podcast in a series of products.

Most listeners agreed that podcasts work best as supplementary material - as a means of providing either context prior to trying to apply what one is learning or as a means or reviewing context after one has already applied what was learned. That is, a podcast is a great way to prepare or review but does not replace real experience, which is the best teacher.

The focus groups also lauded the 'reflective questions' found in the podcasts - like pauses in an internal monologue in which the listener is called upon to try to at least imagine applying the concept that he or she is listening to. Listeners also liked the summaries at the end of the podcasts - as one listener noted, if you read something and stop paying attention, you have to go back and re-read it. If you listen to something and stop paying attention, you need the person you were listening to to offer a quick summary so you don't feel lost.

Where the focus group discussions about the podcasts got a bit controversial is when focus group members were chatting about the content covered in the podcast and the way in which the podcasts should be used with modern-day millennial learners. Some group members said that today's students would want video or they would be too distracted by other tasks to really take in the audio content. Others said kids today tend to multitask no matter what - whether a video or a live teacher is involved, students will be fiddling with their phones while (and sometimes in place of) actually listening.

The other divisive discussion was how to motivate students to listen and retain the information presented so they could apply what they were supposed to be learning in practice. Personally, I feel this was answered in the unanimous approval of the stories in the podcast - users will remember the story and so make sure what they need to hear is in a good story form.

However, a la Khan Academy, most members of the focus group (and, to be honest, me too) thought it good to have some sort of quiz or exam to make sure that student listeners were motivated to retain the information presented in the podcast.