Dr Andy Breen and Dr Siân Jones, both Physics lecturers at the Institute of Mathematical and Physical Sciences at UWA, are using MP3 technology to make voice recordings of their lectures available to their students via the internet in the form of podcasts.

Once recorded, each 50 minute lecture is transformed into a 30megabyte file which can be downloaded by students registered on the course onto an I-Pod or other similar MP3 players from the University’s Blackboard web pages.

Dr Andy Breen has been ‘podcasting’ lectures since the autumn of 2004 and is believed to be one of the first in the UK to use the technology in this way.

“The initial reason for doing this was to provide support for students who were having difficulty taking notes and was driven partly by the Disability Discrimination Act. As things have worked out the podcasts have been far more successful than I had anticipated and are used regularly by a good proportion of our students,” he said.