Title: 8.2 Audio
Course: Certificate in Online Education

Using audio files

Earlier in the course we saw how you could use the Audacity software to record and edit your own audio files. If you want to use audio files in your course you can either create your own, perhaps a short course introduction or you may wish to use pre-recorded audio files released as Open Education Resources. You may even want to use clips from an OER audio file that you have downloaded.

To create your own audio files, you can record then directly onto your computer, or some mobile phones and mp3 players include voice recording software.

As with other multimedia, audio files can get large very quickly, so you'll need to watch out that the files you create are manageable for your users. There are several audio files types you may come across:

WAV: these are the raw (uncompressed) audio files, this is usually what be produced when you record your audio. The files sizes would usually be prohibitively large to include in your course, so you'd need to compress these files into one of the following types:

MP3: I'm sure you've all used mp3 files before, these are probably the most common type of audio file, well balanced between compression and quality.

OGG: This is an open source audio format. Similar to mp3, except that mp3 is a proprietary compression format and ogg is open source.

To give you a rough idea of files sizes and the difference compression can make, one minute of music in wav format would take up around 10Mb but in mp3 or ogg format it would only use up 1Mb.

There are many other audio file formats available, but you will need to ensure that your students have the correct software installed to be able to play these files. Mp3 would be the format which students are most familiar with and so least likely to have problems downloading and playing.

Embedding audio in Moodle

Embedding audio into your course is the same as uploading any other type of file. You can upload the file in exactly the same way as you have uploaded presentations, documents and images.

After you have uploaded the file, Moodle automatically recognises that it's an audio file, so when your students click on the link, they will be presented with the Moodle audio player.

The resource will display in your course homepage like this (note the speaker icon to show students this is an audio file):

The Moodle audio player:

 | Why not have a try creating your own audio file, or uploading an OER audio file to see how it will work in your course? Maybe you could record one of your presentations or lectures and make the recording available for your students.

Other factors to consider

We've already mentioned that you may need to be careful with the file sizes and formats, but there are other factors you may wish to consider when using audio in your course.

If your students will be using multimedia files (either plain audio or video too) in student computer labs, do they have access to headphones? Having many people in a computer lab all listening to different multimedia through speakers can be very disruptive for other students trying to study. Perhaps you should make a few sets of headphones available in the student computer labs for students to borrow.

Earlier we saw how to put alternative text on your image files to make them accessible for all students, especially those who may have visual impairments. What if some of your students have hearing problems? To make your audio files accessible to all students this you can include a transcript of the file in your course.

Both of these factors also apply to video files. We'll look at how you can use video and flash in the next section.