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Introduction: So, Why Podcasts?
Introduction: So, Why Podcasts?
Welcome!
Welcome!
Hello Instructor! Welcome to our podcasting tool kit for Higher-Ed, though many of the resources can easily be adapted for other levels of education. The goal of this tool kit is to help you contextualize and think about how to use the other resources in our larger podcasting guide.
Overview of the Tool Kit
Overview of the Tool Kit
Identify how podcasting can be beneficial to both students and faculty
Look at a few examples of podcasting at Brown.
Learn about resources, both universal and specific to Brown, that will help you get started
2022 Workshop Recording
2022 Workshop Recording
If you prefer video to scrolling, this recording is of a workshop we conducted that reviews most of the resources in this tool kit.
Getting Started with "So, Why Podcasts"
Getting Started with "So, Why Podcasts"
This short 8 minute podcast episode is a good primer for any instructor considering adding podcasting into their courses
“So, Why Podcasts”
Produced by Leo Selvaggio
Guests include:
Instructor Megan Hall - Megan_Hall@brown.edu
Student + Creative Technology Assistant Luci Jones
Using Podcasts in Courses
Using Podcasts in Courses
There are 3 primary ways to use podcasting in course:
- Instructor produced materials
Instructors are able to translate their lectures and other relevant course materials into "podcasts" or other audio files. This asynchronous approach can be extremely useful as educations moves towards more online and hybrid learning models
2. Introducing podcasts as text
2. Introducing podcasts as text
Podcasts can easily complement or even replace assigned readings. Podcast interviews are often primary sources that are rich with biographical material. Lastly, depending on the selection of podcasts, including them can easily increase the diversity and representation in course content
3. Student-produced assignments
3. Student-produced assignments
Assigning podcasting assignments can be a great alternative to a final paper. In fact, podcasts can reinforce many of the skills found in academic writing like editing, making arguments, and citing evidence, while also exposing students to valuable media skills.
If you are interested in a more thorough and academic take on the use of podcasting in courses, consider this article published by the Sheridan Center for Teaching and Learning
Benefits of Podcasts in Courses
Benefits of Podcasts in Courses
Benefits for Instructors:
Benefits for Instructors:
Creating asynchronous resources can reduce the amount of time spent lecturing.
Increased access for students. Podcast has lower bandwidth and technical requirements compared to video and/ or live zoom.
Encourages a student-driven environment where they can:
learn at their own pace.
learn at times that are optimal for their schedule
review materials when needed
It is much easier to learn and produce podcasts compared to video and other forms of media.
It provides an opportunity to engage with the burgeoning field of Digital Humanities
Instructor Megan Hall, featured in the "So, Why Podcasts" episode above.
Image credit : LA Johnson/NPR for "Starting Your Podcast: A Guide For Students"
Benefits for Students:
Benefits for Students:
Exposure to multi-modal learning paths.
Listening to materials can be of great benefit for commuter students
Podcasting assignments are more approachable than other media assignments
Podcasting encourages the embodiment of the subject material, especially when student-produced. When students make media, they:
Have an increased empathetic response to the material
Retain the material better
Are allowed to process the material in an entirely different way through their creativity
Develop media literacy and skills that will often make them more competitive in the job market
Can directly increase the amount of representation and diversity in the course and the field of study by adding unrepresented authors to the course materials via podcasts, or by having students publish their work respectively
A Case Study: Immigrant Entrepenuership
A Case Study: Immigrant Entrepenuership
The Course: Global Dynamics and Immigrant Entrepreneurship in the U.S
The Course: Global Dynamics and Immigrant Entrepreneurship in the U.S
“Global Dynamics and Immigrant Entrepreneurship in the U.S” is a course that ran at Brown University in 2019
Jen Nazerno, Interim Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and Innovation (SPS)Barrett Hazeltine Professor of the Practice, Assistant Professor of Public Health & Entrepreneurship
" I thought the podcast would be an innovative way for students to record the narratives of immigrant business owners both locally and around the country. These stories could then be shared with the world…I felt these stories needed to be told. This podcast project was a way of documenting their journey, their immigrant story" - Jen N.
Some Highlights of the Course:
Students produced interview-based podcasts with immigrant entrepreneurs in and around Providence, RI.
Students were coached and instructed to produce a 15 min "episode" that included an interview, some narration, and background music,
Students had little to no prior experience with audio storytelling and were taught how to conduct interviews, record, and edit audio using resources much like the ones found in this podcasting guide.
The Student-Produced Results:
The Student-Produced Results:
“Podcasts take a lot more time than I originally anticipated (in a good way)...Through learning this process, the students and I really started to appreciate the time and effort it takes to create a podcast series”- Jen N.
Below is a very short, edited down, sample of a single episode produced by the course, to give you an example of what students can produce. For full episodes, click the youtube player on the right (below on mobile)
"The students became really invested in developing a really good final product through the use of music and different sound effects to help their immigrant story, and the respective challenges as well as successes, come even more alive through the podcast." - Jen N.
To learn more about podcasts produced at Brown, visit the podcasting page on the Brown website
Understanding the Podcasting Process
Understanding the Podcasting Process
The podcasting process can be roughly broken down into three categories. Below each of those three categories expand to suggest some of the steps in each stage. Some steps link directly to relevant resources in the larger guide.
Pre-production
Pre-production
Pre-production includes anything prior to recording. This can vary based on the type of podcast you are making but some general steps in this phase include:
Outlining and defining themes
Preparing your technology (testing microphones, software, etc)
Scheduling Logistics
Reserving a quiet room
Scheduling interviewees
Reserving equipment if needed
Production
Production
The production phase involves capturing and creating the raw materials you will tell your story with. While the bulk of this for podcasting means recording audio, it also means organizing your raw materials into useable chunks through the process of transcription
Post-production
Post-production
The post-production phase is where the producer's role as a story teller takes shape. It includes editing all the raw material into a finished product
While podcasting may seem very linear, as with all creative endeavors, the process isn't always so neatly aligned in these steps. It can be messy! You may be transcribing your recording, and feeling like a perspective is missing, and then go back to a pre-producting step of identifying what you need and scheduling a new interview. Or you may be editing, and realize there was some really bad background noise in your narration that prompts you to re-record. Its better to think of these steps as useful concepts to consider than a linear map that will take you from point A to point B
Resources for Instructors:
Resources for Instructors:
In addition to the resource pages already highlighted in this guide, this section will highlight some external resources available to all instructors. If you are an instructor at Brown, there is an additional section below this one with some additional resources specific to Brown University.
DIY Your Own Home/Office Recording Studio
DIY Your Own Home/Office Recording Studio
If your institution has a dedicated audio recording room or set up then we highly recommend leveraging it to your advantage, especially if there is a technical expert that can help you. That being said, setting up an recording studio in your home or office is easier than you might think. We have created another guide with tips and tricks to getting started that you can use for yourself or share with your students who may want to record in their own space. This guide includes some recommendations on some relatively inexpensive recording equipment based on need.
A DIY set up using a fabric cube, some foam, a microphone, laptop and audio interface
Podcasting Assignment Ideas
Podcasting Assignment Ideas
Scaffolding Podcasting Assignments
Scaffolding Podcasting Assignments
Adding smaller, low-stakes, podcasting assignments into your syllabus is an important step in supporting your student's success and development of a new media skill. Doing so can help increase your students' sense of efficacy and familairty with podcasting skills, like audio recording. which more often than not result in better final projects. If your sylabus is already set, consider providing these as optional extra-credit assignments early in the semester. Below are some ideas of what these smaller assignments could look like
Assign them our Audio Editing Tutorial (30 mins)
Almost any assignment will require some audio editing. Assigning students an audio editing tutorial early, gives them time to develop their skills with the software, and may help inform their approach with larger assignments
Audio Introduction
After your students have completed the Audio Editing Tutorial mentioned above, you can ask them to develop a 1 min podcast Introducing themselves.
Provide them with a list of potential questions, (specific ones for more structure)
Share this smartphone recording guide with them
Require them to remove any background noise in editing
Require them to add background music and at least one "special effect" or illustrative sound
Deconstructing Podcasts
Assign or have students select a podcast. Ask them to deconstruct and analyse the podcast, really paying attention to not just the arguments made, but the sound quality, the editing, the music, etc. In a written or audio response, have them:
describe what is successful about the podcast.
Is there a quality about the narrator's performance they liked?
Did the editor reference and idea or sound bite over and over
Was there a good use of music or sound effects?
What wasn't successful about the podcast, and how would they change it?
Was the format interesting?
Did a segment run too long
Was the mic quality good?
From Interview to Narration
In this assignment, students will practice both interviewing and using narration to summarize an interviewee's answer.
Pair up students into teams of two. They will be interviewing each other (2-5 mins each) based on a topic of your choosing.
Provide them with 2 standard questions, and ask them to craft two of their own follow-up questions
Have them record interviews with each other.
Have them produce a mini podcast where:
The student records a narration introducing their interviewee
The student writes and records a short narrative summary of each answer their interviewee gave.
Out of each interviewee's answer select and edit a small sound bite that compliments each narrative summary.
The entire thing is edited into a 1-2 min podcast.
This assignment will help students develop the important skill of using narration to clarify, contextualize, and simplify audio content.
Large Project/Final Assignment Podcasting Archetypes
Large Project/Final Assignment Podcasting Archetypes
Below are some if the podcasting formats you can assign and some things you and your students can expect from each type.
Interview-Based Podcast
In this kind of podcast, students are conducting long-form interviews with 1-3 people, usually with subject matter experts in a given topic, and then editing those interviews down into a concise and effective argument or review.
What to Expect:
10-15 mins are good benchmarks for this kind of assignment
Editing 1-3 hours of interviews into this time frame requires alot of precise editing to make a compelling argument.
Students will spend about 8-12 hours working on this kind of assignment
Skills learned: designing questions, interviewing, recording, editing
Critical Lens Podcast
This kind of podcast asks a particular question or examines a topic from a variety of angles. They may involve interviewing individuals for opinions or information, but often they are directed and short interactions. This type of podcast is usually driven by a strong sense of narration by the student producer, and getting lots of takes on the subject from a variety of people. This type of podcast was made popular by Radio Lab or This American Life.
What to Expect:
5-10 mins is a good benchmark for this kind of assignment
This kind of podcast requires the most creative editing, which can be incredibly time consuming
Students will spend 12-25hours on this kind of assignment
This often requires significant research and planning prior to production
Skills learned: research, recording, script writing, editing, narrative storytelling
Radio Play
Radio plays are often collaborative endeavors with multiple writers and voice actors, though they can be approached a single individual as well. These podcasts harken back to radio plays like War of the Worlds or The Phantom. The material is often completely original, meaning students focus on writing scripts, recording actors, and editing in sound effects to bring the text to life.
What to Expect:
There is no real bench mark of appropriate time spent for something like this as radio plays could be a short 8 min vignette, to a full-on play or saga spanning multiple episodes.
While there is alot of potential writing if the text is original, the emphasis of this assignment should be on how well the text is adapted for the medium. Emphasize the use of music, sound effects, and vocal quality of the actors
A student working on their own could spend anywhere from 15-40 hours working on this kind of assignment
If working in groups, be careful that all the editing doesn't fall on just one person. Editing collaboratively can be a tricky thing to manage in a classroom setting. Make sure groups have lots of lead-time to work out logistics.
Skills learned: Script writing, recording, editing, small-scale production management.
Experimental Sound Podcasts
These podcasts often don't have a specific format. They can range from recording/collecting sounds from a city or town and editing them into a sonic landscape, to editing 50 people's responses to a single question without offering any context. These podcasts often are the most playful and creative and tend to focus on the sonic qualities of experience, treating recorded audio as raw material to manipulate, layer, and and remix in post-production. They are often the hardest to evaluate as an instructor as they tend to veer into the realm of art and subjective expression.
What to Expect:
5-10 mins is often a good benchmark for this kind of assignment, assuming there is considerable audio manipulation
Students may spend 20-40 hours working on this assignment as it often requires alot of experimentation before the final result
Skill learned: experimentation, recording, editing, sonic manipulation.
Opinion Podcasts
While they may be the ones we enjoy listening to the most, in general, podcasts in which just one person is talking and giving their opinion, even if researched, does not make for good podcasting assignments. It often leads to students reading a traditionally written final paper into a microphone, which doesn't really explore the medium and can be quite boring to listen to.
While there isn't anything wrong with this per say, consider adding the requirement of illustrating certain sections of their arguments with background music and sound effects, to really enhance the sonic experience.
Another variation might be to have students review or analyze a song, movie, or speech, where they have to pull in the original audio into their podcast and cite sections of it as they make their argument. This would increase the editing requirement to make it a worthwhile assignment, though be wary of copyright infringement when sampling our sources like this.
What to Expect:
15-30 mins is a good benchmark for these kinds of assignments
Students will spend 4-8 hours working on these kinds podcasts as they often only require minimal editing
Skills learned: outline a topic of conversation, recording, some editing,
Setting Clear Expectations With Student Assignments
Setting Clear Expectations With Student Assignments
While podcasting is a fairly easy and accessible medium compared to something like a video assignment, it can be daunting for some students and produce unwanted anxiety. The best way to relieve this anxiety is to be very clear about what you expect out of the assignment. Some ways to do this are to:
Be explicit about how podcasting ties into the larger course objectives.
Emphasize that you do not expect professional-sounding results
Provide examples of past student podcasting projects you would like them to model
Design scaffolded mini-podcasting assignments over the semester so they have opportunities to practice, develop and refine their skills
Provide clear requirements and rubrics on how they will be graded.
Consider modeling the podcasting experience with them in some way.
For example, Jen Nazerno (above) wrote and recorded the intros for her course's podcasts.
Image Credit: Irene Rinaldi
Examples of Clear Requirements:
Examples of Clear Requirements:
Your podcast must be between __ and __ minutes long
Your podcast must be at least __ mins long
Your podcast must feature at least __ interviews
Your podcast must be exported as a ___ file type
Your podcast must demonstrate at least one instance of using background music to convey or contextualize mood. Your introduction and outro do not count towards this requirement.
Your podcast must be legible, meaning that listeners can easily understand what is being said without being distracted by unwanted sound. Examples of legible and illegible sound quality can be found to the right or below if on mobile
Provide Examples of Expectations when possible
Provide Examples of Expectations when possible
The above sample could be cleaned up in editing but demonstrates acceptable and legible audio quality
The above sample is illegible and would make for a very difficult podcast to list to.
Digital StoryTelling: Podcasting Rubric
Digital StoryTelling: Podcasting Rubric
Designed by Melissa Kane PhD, Digital Learning and Design at Brown Univeristy, this rubric below will help you communicate your expectations to students. We have developed other resources centered around digital storytelling in general, but if you would like to use the podcasting rubric below yourself, click here to make your own copy saved into your personal google drive.
Quick Links to Share with Students
Quick Links to Share with Students
Podcast about Podcasting: a Student Primer
Audio Editing Tutorial (Requires access to Adobe Audition)
Storytelling Resources for Students
Using music, sound effects, etc
"Now Here This" Producer Notebook (for very engaged students, a guide made by students)
Resources at Brown:
Resources at Brown:
This section will refer to resources available to Brown University Instructors.
Join a Community of Audio Storytellers!
Join a Community of Audio Storytellers!
If you are interested in learning more about podcasting at Brown, chat with other producers on campus, and in general tap into the community, consider joining the podcasting listserve podcasts@listserv.brown.edu. You can also check out all the fantastic podcasts being made on campus by instructors like yourself on the official brown podcasting website.
Spaces to Record at Brown:
Spaces to Record at Brown:
Brown's campus has a few places you can record good audio
Nelson Entrepreneurship Center Niches
Located on Thayer and Euclid, the Center has several sound treated booths they call "niches" on the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th floor. Intended to be used for short private phone calls, it is first come first serve and use should limited to about an hour.
The Rock library has a sound proofed studio for video and audio recording that is great for podcasting. They are also reservable, which can be great if you need to specify a time with your interviewee. You may need to ask for access first time you go. They are located in the Digital Studio, which is on the right as you walk in to reception.
The MMLs offer training in the Grad Center Studio, a self-service video studio that can be suitable for audio recording. That being said, the gym in the Bear Lair was recently moved to right above the studio, meaning you may hear a faint treadmill or two, so we only recommend using this resource on off hours like the middle of the day or very late at night. Training is required to access the space but it can then be used and reserved 24/7.
Granoff MML Audio Booth
The Granoff Multimedia Lab now has a recording booth! This booth will be good for quick short narration work. It is in an active lab space so sound is only controlled so much by the actual booth. Come in the morning hours (9am-12pm) or later at night when the space is less active. You can bring your own smartphone or recorder to use or use our high-quality condenser mic connected to an external computer
To access the Multimedia Labs to use the audio booth, you will need to become an MML Member by visit brown.edu/go/mmlorientation. To learn more about the booth, visit brown.edu/go/mmlbooth
Equipment to Rent
Equipment to Rent
The IT Service Center, located on the 5th Floor of Paige Robinson Hall, has a limited selection of technology available to Instructors, Students, and Staff.
While we recommend students use their smartphones for coursework, there are also a variety of microphones Brown University students and faculty can check out through the IT Service Center. These can offer some additional control over your audio and enhanced quality. Click here for a primer on how to use the H1N, pictured here, which is our recommendation for people new to using recording equipment.
Digital Learning and Design (DLD) is a team of Learning Designers, Technologists, and Media Producers that support instructors in designing their courses. Click the buttons below to sign up for 1-on-1 consultations with members of the DLD team
Book a Consultation with Leo from the Multimedia Labs.
Book a Consultation with Leo from the Multimedia Labs.
As part of the mission of the Multimedia Labs, the authors of this guide, we provide consultations to Brown University Instructors who are specifically interested in adding podcasting assignments to their courses.
1-on-1 Podcasting Help Sessions Students and Instructors
1-on-1 Podcasting Help Sessions Students and Instructors
The Multimedia Labs hires students with podcasting expertise into the role of a Creative Technology Assistant. These CTAs are available to meet with Students, Instructors and Staff to provide 1-on-1 technical support as well as consult on podcasting projects.
Link to provide your students:
https://sites.google.com/brown.edu/multimedia-labs-new-site/services/1-on-1-creative-help
Or if you are looking for help with your own podcasting that isn't related to course assignments, feel free to use the same link above or sign up below:
If the link below is showing as "not valid" it is because you are viewing this page during a time in the semester in which our student workers are currently not available
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