Audio Active: Discovering Mobile Learner-Gatherers from Across the Formal-Informal Continuum

This paper challenges the dominant perception evident in the literature that mobile podcasting is primarily a medium for knowledge transmission. It describes why and how mobile audio learning can be facilitative, active and integrated, and how it can involve diverse voices, including those of students, in ways that usefully disrupt didactic pedagogy. Audio is described as an active learning environment, capable of supporting connection to the real world around education in which students are able to act as autonomous learner-gatherers. The paper responds to concerns raised by Ciussi, Rosner, and Augier (2009) that some students are disinterested in podcasting and uses a scenario-based design methodology (Carroll, 2000) to describe and evaluate six innovative applications. It concludes that mobile audio can be understood as an active medium capable of richly and meaningfully engaging learners.