Cambridge Marketing College has introduced a podcasting facility to enable distance-learning students to hear downloaded recorded lectures from their course straight to an MP3 player.

The marketing college is the largest in Europe and is one of the Chartered Institute for Marketing (CIM) study centres for its professional marketing diploma.

The distance-learning facility was introduced to students in early April. It works by recording the lecture as an MP3 file that's uploaded onto the college website for students to download onto their mobile phones, iPods or alternative MP3 players.

Three hundred students pass the CIM exams at Cambridge each year. The college has hundreds of distance-learning students from the UK as well as in 47 countries across the globe.

Charles Nixon, college principal of Cambridge Marketing College, believes this will help to support their studies. “Location and distance is no longer a barrier for learning. In the past these students only had access to the lecture notes and talked with tutors via email and telephone. Now they can experience the live lecture themselves.”

However he does state that podcasting will not be a substitute for local students not attending the actual lectures. “Our lectures are very round table-based with student input; therefore podcasts will be an attribute, not a replacement.”

The technology is currently only available on its four professional diploma courses and two lectures are recorded every week, but the college plans to extend the facility to its other courses this summer.

Nixon enthuses, “this is new and innovative technology. Podcasting is the future for lectures, it's easy to use, and really supports students learning, as they don't have to worry about making notes all the way through first time round and can enjoy just listening to the debates.”

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