Review
There's nothing like being taught by an expert. And when the skills being taught involve using free and open source software, then I think this is something worth raving about.
A recent workshop at the University of Canberra (UC) by 
Wendy Pollard on editing audio files was well attended. Wendy, a multimedia expert, gave us a 3 hour crash-course in using Audacity as a tool for creating, editing, mixing, and exporting sound files. Being able to work with digital audio files is an important skills for academics interested, for example, in recording and sharing lectures, conference talks, and creating other audio-based training materials. Being able to work effectively with audio files is also a vital skill for anyone interested in creating podcasts.
It was a refreshing surprise to find Wendy's level of technical expertise and experience available at UC. And it was a real plus to find someone at the university promoting and supporting staff use of free and open source software (even if Audacity is not yet on the UC desktop image).
Wendy also made all her training materials available, so I've massaged them into wiki format and made them available here:
Like most things these days, material for learning to use Audacity is freely and readily available online. My learning of Audacity however was considerably accelerated by having Wendy demo and guide us through the main features of Audacity and by having us tackle some practical exercises which included deleting sections, removing noise, adding effects, normalising, fading in and fading out, working with multiple tracks, saving project files as .aup, and exporting files to wav, mp3, and wma, the latter requiring Windows Media Encoder.
I feel much more confident now in making professional use of Audacity and am looking forward to practicing and refining the skills taught, and then applying these skills by getting podcasting happening in the units I teach.
Evaluation comments
A TEDS evaluation feedback form was also completed, including the following responses to open-ended questions.
What did you find most useful about the workshop?
- Relevance of topic (to teaching and learning with technology).
- Expertise of trainer.
- Use of free software.
- That it was in the non-teaching period.
- The trainer gave permission for free use of the electronic notes and material.
Please provide suggestions concerning ways in which the workshop could be improved.
- There would be a greater ROI for UC if all 11 interested participants were allowed to attend.
- There was little notice ahead of time.
- Electronic version of notes would be better on UCSpace (would allow wider distribution of corporate information).
- There would be greater transfer of knowledge from the workshop if the Audacity software was already set up on the staff and student disk image and use of it approved by the university.
- This was not really an introductory workshop - it probably went too fast for most beginners. So, it probably should be billed as it is for medium to high-end users.
- This workshop is really part 1, with part 2 needed on podcasting.
- The workshop learning could be continued and extended more effectively if there was a sanctioned, easy medium for electronic communication amongst staff interested in using technology in teaching and learning.
- Cursor was difficult to see on the projection screen - UC should consider changing the cursors by default on the computers used for projection to being large and black, with a slower and more visible trail.
What would you like to see covered in future WebCT or IT skills workshops?
Review of audio files workshop on how to use Audacity
