Ophthalmology podcast: an innovation in the field of education

Session Details

Session Title: Training and Innovation

Session Date/Time: Tuesday 10/10/2017 | 16:30-18:00

Paper Time: 16:36

Venue: Room 4.4

First Author: : H.Vannadil INDIA

Co Author(s): :    S. Gupta                    

Abstract Details

Purpose:

Podcasts have been used by many artists around the world to disseminate their voice to countless audiences. The power of podcast needs to be harnessed for medical education. In many developing countries, there exist a shortfall of quality medical educators as well as resource material. Podcasts have the capability to conduct classes and lectures at far flung areas with a lower bandwidth compared to videos. The purpose was to utilise the capabilities of podcasting to disseminate knowledge and help medical students as well as specialty residents understand ophthalmology topics well, in a lucid manner.

Setting:

ARMED FORCES MEDICAL COLLEGE, PUNE, INDIA

Methods:

Starting Dec 2015, ten episodes of podcast were written and produced by an ophthalmology resident. Script of the content was formalised after thorough study and research of basic ophthalmology topics from standard textbooks and literature. Text was read by the voice artist in a home recording system. Recording system used was a headset microphone set with a laptop with open source audio editing software. Audio was cleaned, corrected and background music added. Recording and editing of each episode took 60 to 90min. The file was uploaded to commercial hosting server with ID3 tags. The podcast featured in Apple iTunes.

Results:

A total of 13 podcast episodes were published in a duration of 13 months and their performance noted. The 13 episodes of podcasts generated 2990 plays in total till Feb 2017. The highest played episode was tenth episode spanning 433 plays. The channel saw the maximum listeners from the USA giving a total of 1667 listeners (55.75% of total) followed by India with 357 listeners. 52% of listeners were returning listeners who came back for additional episodes. With each published episode, the listeners count increased in spikes. The total downloads were at 89 till Feb 2017.

Conclusions:

Podcasts on the basics of ophthalmology is a successful and well received project. Usage statistics showed a good reception across the globe. Although produced in a non-English speaking country by students and amateurs, the podcast had a good listener base. The highest listeners being from a first world English speaking country is a proof that the quality in terms of production and content was adequate.

Financial Disclosure:

NONE