Active Learning: student-generated podcasts
Rebekka Jolley
What is the idea?
Podcasts are a prevalent source of media that most of us listen to and engage with daily, whether they be for educational or entertainment purposes. A student generated podcast is a current and engaging way of allowing students to co-create and complete group work. This idea will discuss step by step how students can make a seven to fifteen minute episode. Students can develop learning development skills such as: research, collaboration, criticality, debating, and presentation skills alongside digital and creative skills such as script writing and audio editing, combining theoretical critical thinking and reflection within a digital and interactive medium.
Why this idea?
Student generated podcasts are an effective active learning tool that also enhance students’ collaborative learning skills (Edirisingha, & Salmon, 2007). Using student generated podcasts is a valuable group work activity. Podcasting has specific tasks and roles that students can assign to each other. Cane and Cashmore (2008) explore student generated podcasts as learning tools that successfully enhance team working skills as students had roles in the production process and shared the workload.
By incorporating ‘podography’ (Laing & Wootton 2007) into your pedagogy it can improve sessions with students as it offers a unique learning experience, and in my own practice has improved students’ motivation when tackling theoretical research materials. Student generated podcasts are unique as they combine a creative task with a research focused output. Unlike essays and other more conventional ‘academic’ tasks, podcasts encourage students to think, problem solve, and present their research findings creatively. The process of production fosters students’ development and curation of a number of skills such as: critical and creative thinking, analytical, devising, script writing, presentation and teamwork. Snelling (2019, n.p.) states that podcasts ‘lets students practice their presentation skills in a low-risk environment’. Furthermore, podcasts are a student-centred activity. Podcasts create a narrative and produce a digital storytelling product, and during the task students improve their digital and reflective skills (Jenkins & Lonsdale, 2008). Using them within my own teaching in the subject of Theatre and Performance with my first year undergraduate students in their classes of 10 on their Contextual Studies module. The podcasts help them investigate, analyse, and research a particular theatre practitioner which helps them when they have a later summative assessment of an essay. I have seen how it has boosted students’ interest, and motivation in the subject material for the rest of the module and their engagement with the later summative assessment.
How could others implement this idea?
Student generated podcasts are easier to set up and run than might have previously been thought, and you do not need to book