Practice Perfect 977
Are Podcasts Reasonable Forms of Education?

Print

As an educator, I spent much of my early teaching career trying to dissuade students from mindlessly looking up answers to medical questions on the internet (AKA “googling”). The problem I always saw was the inability to confirm the validity of the information. As time has progressed, so has the educational offerings on the internet. I’m proud to be part of PRESENT e-Learning Systems since they’ve been pioneers in online education. Others, such as ACFAS and the APMA have followed suite, and I’ve grown to increasingly appreciate many of the YouTube-based podcasts such as Pod Patrol and Dean’s Chat (for podiatric topics) and Strong Medicine and Medicalis Perfectionalis (for general medical fields) among others.

As someone who spends a lot of time driving (my typical Southern California commute to work is about an hour on average), I’ve found podcasts (such as The Curbsiders Internal Medicine Podcast, Curbsiders Teach, and Core IM for those medical topics) to be entertaining and educational… Or are they?

Are podcasts really educational? Am I truly learning? Or am I fooling myself? When students put on a medical podcast to “study” while driving, is this really a good idea? What does the science say?

First, a digression. When we use the term learning, what does that actually mean? Generally, learning can be defined as a permanent change in behavior that results from experience, practice, or study, rather than from innate or reflexive processes. In cognitive scientific terms, true learning is a result of remembering and recalling as shown in Figure 1. So, when we ask if we learn from podcasts, it’s not enough to say we heard the information. It has to be encoded into long-term memory and later retrieved when needed.

Can We Truly Learn From Podcasts – What Does the Literature Say?

Getting to the literature, it’s important to recall that podcasts are consumed in two primary ways, either straight undistracted listening or while multitasking. For example, I already mentioned I listen to podcasts while driving. Thus, we have to look at this under two circumstances: straight listening and listening while active. Overall, the research shows retention rates as listed in Table 1 when comparing podcasts to other learning methods.

As you can see from the table, passively listening to a podcast, as I do while driving, leads to a very low yield. If I were tested on the information I “learned” from a podcast, I’d fail that exam. Clearly, that is not learning. The reason for this is we know from years of psychosocial research that passive methods of learning do not lead to long-term retention and knowledge acquisition.

So, passive podcasting is not a successful learning method. However, as noted in the table’s description of “active listening” the retention is much higher (although really not good enough for those in the medical community). If you’re a student reading this, and you’re using your commute to listen to podcasts with the intention to study for exams then don’t bother. You might as well just enjoy the drive.

On the other hand, if podcasts are incorporated into a plan of active learning, such as doing small group discussions or workshops that reinforce what was taught in the podcast, this can be a very successful supplement. The bottom line is that, like every other passive learning method, listening to a podcast while driving, is not a successful learning method.

Best wishes.

Jarrod Shapiro, DPM
PRESENT Practice Perfect Editor
[email protected]