Christian Stoll 2021
Audio - it doesn't always have to be video
In addition to videos, audio content is also a format that can be used profitably as a teaching/learning medium or as an action product. Formats that are comparable to podcasts, radio features, audio books or audio plays are suitable for this purpose. Audio is not as suitable as videos for creating instructions for action such as tutorials or lectures.
However, audio is ideally suited for interviews with, for example, experts, contemporary witnesses, those affected or people from contemporary history. With the help of such audio interviews, an insight into the reality of people's lives and work can be gained. Especially listening to interviews via headphones suggests a much stronger closeness to the interviewed persons. Such interviews are therefore suitable to sensitize the listeners for a certain topic. Such concepts are therefore also very interesting for the field of science communication.
In addition to individual interviews, conversations between several people, focus group discussions and group interviews can also be recorded as audio. Here, as with individual interviews, there is the possibility (depending on the orientation of the course) of evaluating them using qualitative methods.
The advantage of audio over video is the low-threshold access. On the one hand, experience has shown that it is easier to recruit people for an audio-only interview than for a video interview. Secondly, the technical effort and complexity of post-processing is far lower with audio. Also, the creation and editing of video requires much more powerful computer hardware than audio, whereas audio editing can easily be done on older equipment. Audio editing for pure voice recordings such as interviews is also less demanding than for video, for example. Many operating systems on computers, tablets and smartphones usually come with pre-installed software that can be used to record audio and also enable simple editing steps. So creating audio generally requires fewer resources. In addition, there is also very powerful free opensource audio editing software.
The access is also lower-threshold for the listeners. Audio files are often smaller than video files. They can therefore be downloaded and consumed even with a poor Internet connection. Audio content can be easily consumed on the go or at work via smartphones, for example. This makes them easier to use from any location than videos.
Audio recordings are also suitable for role-playing games, audio books/short stories or also the discussion of the content of e.g. texts, films or other audio publications.
For good audio quality, USB condenser microphones or the use of headsets, the use of current dictation machines or even the use of professional audio recorders are also available here.
Another easy way to create an interview is also offered by video conferencing systems. Many video conferencing systems offer the possibility to record the conference as a video. For example, you can conduct the interview using video conferencing software, record the interview as a video, separate the audio track from the video using the appropriate editing software, and then export the interview as a pure audio file.
Like documents, audio and video files can also be made available to other people using learning platforms such as Moodle or cloud storage systems.