Abstract

The Panpsycast Philosophy Podcast is an audio learning tool which provides content aimed at students to help improve their knowledge outside of the classroom. The podcast offers discussions and analysis dedicated to the topics set by the OCR Religious Studies specification studied in the UK. It also provides content which has the potential for synoptic links across modules and possibly other subjects the students are learning. The research project aimed to gauge how classroom teachers and their students perceived the usefulness of the podcast when using it as a flipped-learning tool. Teachers were asked to choose episodes of the podcast and then set their student's homework to listen in preparation for a discussion or written task. The staff and students were then required to fill in a feedback questionnaire which they accessed online. Teachers addressed questions relating to their thoughts on how the podcast was best employed as a learning tool and how it benefited their teaching practice, if at all. Students answered questions concerning their enjoyment of the podcast medium and how it compared to their other methods of learning. The results of the quantitative and qualitative feedback received from the questionnaire are analysed in the following assessment.