Audio Instruction Part 1 LTEC 5220

Audio-only instruction has many benefits over visual style learning. Younger students, tend to “prefer listening over reading” (Barron, 2004). It is hypothesized that struggles with younger students do better because they have with less literary experience. As an educator, I understand that many students, especially those of lower socioeconomic status do not have reading levels to that match their grade level.  While it is important to teach reading skills, as a non-English speaker, having audio versions of some lessons would be a benefit for these students. 

For adult learners, audio learning is also a benefit. I am an avid audiobook reader. As a member of the amazon company, audible.com, I own 459 titles. One of the disadvantages many people point out with audio learning, is that conversation usually is spoken at 150 words per minute (wpm) while many students can read at 250-300 wpm (Barron, 2004).  Audible has a technology that allows readers to increase the pace of the book, without the “chipmunk” effect.  Some studies have shown that, if an audio recording is speed up, listeners can comprehend information speeds at or above the level of speed readers (Barron, 2004).  I can speak from experience that that is true.

Visual verbal instruction requires someone to read, while visual nonverbal instruction uses images.  Audio verbal instruction requires speaking or narration, while audio nonverbal instructions consists of music and sound effects.  Images, with the advent of digital cameras and google images are very easy to find.  Music and sound effects are far more difficult to obtain. Thus, audio productions are more difficult for the layman to create professionally. This does give an advantage to instructional designers with audio experience.

The audio medium also requires time.  When creating the “audio mashup”, I found that I had to lesson to the same sound over and over again.  This was a bit annoying after a while, and it felt more time consuming than creating an image.  I also have found that while I could create images on my laptop in a Starbucks, I had to do audio stuff at home.

That being said, my roommate is an audio engineer, who knows a lot about this type of stuff. It has been fun talking to him about his work.  It would be nice to know what type of audio libraries he has access to, and how that could better my instructional practice.

Barron, A. E. (2004). Auditory instruction. In A. f. Technology, Handbook of Research on Educational Communications and Technology (pp. 949-978).