According to the online version of WSU’s Guardian independent student newspaper, the school is in the final stages of opening up a dedicated facility for creating podcasts.

Housed in WSU’s Dunbar Library and available to students and faculty, the podcasting facility is designed to give access to the equipment and software necessary to produce podcasts for a variety of academic and social purposes according to Sue Polanka, head of references and instruction. According to the October 31 story, the facility is also designed to make podcast production easier and more familiar. “By having our own separate room dedicated just to podcasting, we are able to give the students a nice place to come and try out the new software,” says Polanka. ”We wanted to bring what’s up-to-date, fun and common for today’s students to the library here at Wright State.”

As podcasting plays an increasingly large role in education — especially following the ease of access introduced by Apple’s iTunes U — we expect to see more colleges and universities follow in WSU’s footsteps, developing centralized facilities to encourage production and adoption of this technology. Other schools are pursuing more distributed models, offering checkout or access to equipment like BlueMic’s Snowball microphone that can be easily transported (even into field settings) and connected to a laptop to produce podcasts.

Either way, as more faculty and students discover the benefits of podcasting, we expect universities increasingly to support the creation and distribution of this and other new media.