Using a Participatory Action Research Approach to Design a Lecture Podcasting System

Although podcasting is popular in higher education, there is limited research on podcasting in developing institutions or resource constrained environments. There are fragmented implementations of podcasting projects by enthusiastic faculty but the tools used are often proprietary, imported from the West by administrators without any consultation with the lecturers who eventually use them. Similarly, many of these tools are used on a trial basis. The authors hypothesize that involving academics through user centered approaches to the design of educational applications will encourage them to use the tools. This paper reflects on a Participatory Action Research approach adopted in the design of a podcasting system. The research study incorporated a cyclical action model with four distinctive stages designed to guide the constituencies involved in the study to design, test, and possibly enhance the tool. The findings reveal some of the contextual phenomena that create both challenges and opportunities for a podcasting model.