MERLOT Peer Review: Audacity workshop

In this post I will be evaluating an instructional resource I discovered on the Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching or MERLOT. I have selected a workshop on Audacity. This is the Audacity workshop. It is a web based, interactive workshop that used HTML and Adobe Captivate to deliver the presentation.

Quality of Content
The workshop resource offers four demonstrations on recording, editing, changing tempo and exporting with Audacity, along with an overview of the user interface. These are the four basic skills needed to use Audacity. The resource also provides suggested uses of the software for instructors. This makes the module a relevant educational resource for instructors who want to use audio in their class content and assignments.

Potential Effectiveness as a Teaching-Learning Tool
The Audacity workshop could be used for the Explanation, Demonstration and Practice stages of the learning cycle. The “Examples” section provides an Explanation describing how the software can be used by instructors, essentially stating the problem of practice Audacity can be used to solve. The four sections each provide a Demonstration of the software in use. Practice is achieved in the assessments that ask learners to complete four different tasks using Audacity. The Applying stage of the learning process will not take place within this module’s learning experience.

After completing this module students should be able to create and edit a recording in Audacity. The target learners of this module are instructors and students seeking a Language Technology certificate; however, I think this module’s target audience can be expanded to any instructor who wants to use audio recordings to create learning experiences for their students. This resource does allow learners to experience Audacity and improve their skills. Immediately after completing the module instructors can begin creating recordings. They may need to take sometime in deciding where and how to present them to their students. Furthermore, the recording skills are just one part of incorporating Audacity into an instructor’s teaching repertoire. This module is designed for instructors of Foreign Language classes but could be used by teachers of other subjects, for example music or voice classes. Audacity itself can be used by instructors themselves or they can have students create their own recordings. The content of this module extends beyond itself. The teaching goals of this module are easily identified as: Recording, editing and exporting for the first time using Audacity. An instructor can use Audacity to write excellent new learning experiences, and they can have students do more speaking activities than before they began using Audacity.

Ease of Use
This module is easy to navigate. The sidebar includes links to each section of the module and a link to proceed to the next part of the module is at the bottom or completion of each section. The user should find little difficulty in moving through it in a timely manner. The system does not provide direct feedback to the learner, rather the learner must assess his or herself. This tutorial provides some flexibility, as it the learner can return to past sections and navigate at will. It also might be a good resource for beginners as they work on their first projects. This module is straightforward, visually appealing and simple. The presentation is very similar to traditional websites making it easy to navigate and attractive to new students.