Listening to an Educational Podcast While Walking or Jogging

Abstract

The advent of podcasting offers opportunities for students to learn while performing another activity. While podcasting is advocated by many as helping to learn anywhere and anytime, research indicates that it is not so easy for people to do two things at the same time. Two experiments were set up to examine the effect of performing a secondary task while learning with an iPod. In the experimental groups, the participants had to combine a learning task (listening to an educational podcast) with a secondary task (walking or jogging). The control group only had to perform a learning task. Afterwards, all the participants had to complete a learning test. In the first study, there were no significant differences between the learning performances of students of the different conditions. In the second study, the students who were sitting down outperformed the students who were moving while studying.

The Physical Learning Environment of Online Distance Learners in Higher Education – A Conceptual Model

“…Levine et al, 2012; review by Chen and Yan, 2016). It seems likely that such factors as learner characteristics, learner motivation, task characteristics, and perception of relative importance of the tasks are important in influencing a learner's ability to multi-task while learning (Coens et al, 2011;Gaines, 2019).…”

“…The ambient conditions can constrain certain work activities when traveling in a vehicle, as reported by mobile knowledge workers (e.g., Hislop, 2012). Learning via listening to podcasts is possible while the learner is physically moving (walking or jogging), but learning is less effective than when sitting (Coens et al, 2011). Text input performance was reduced when the mobile device user was walking (Musić and Murray-Smith, 2016).…”

Effect of Multitasking on Simulator Sickness and Performance in 3D Aerodrome Control Training

“…Contemporary studies demonstrate negative instructional consequences of physical activities while watching multimedia content (Coens, Reynvoet, & Clarebout, 2011). For instance, mobility of learners or their seating position were influential in multitasking performance where learners in seated positions learned better than walkers (Doolittle & Mariano, 2008) or joggers (Coens, Degryse, Senecaut, Cottyn, & Clarebout, 2011) in multimedia learning environments. In the current pilot study, students were free to move around the control room during their simulator training.…”

“…That is, they were sometimes seated, but mostly mobile in the control room, which might have influenced both simulator sickness and multitasking. More specifically, while physical mobility may either attenuate (Riecke et al, 2015) or increase sickness symptoms (Merhi et al, 2007) depending on the nature of the experimental setting, it is likely to reduce the multitasking performance (Coens, Degryse, et al, 2011, Coens, Reynvoet, & Clarebout, 2011Doolittle & Mariano, 2008). Thus, current subjects' mobility could be either an advantage or disadvantage for effective performance.…”

The Effects of Podcasts on Medical Education: A Systematic Review

“…Podcasts have been popular with medical learners due to their accessibility and the convenience of being able to forward, rewind, and review material with ease [11][12][13][14][15]. There is also a growing body of evidence to support podcasts as an effective teaching tool for medical learners [16][17][18].…”