Artifact 3

Collaborative, Interdisciplinary Podcast

Banners created, respectively, by Kelly Lin and Alisa Petrusinskaia of Georgia Tech

Goals and Learning Outcomes

Collaboration: be productive in communities of practice—for example, as readers and critics, as team members and leaders—balancing individual and collaborative needs and responsibilities.

Analysis: draw connections among ideas, support assertions with evidence and arguments; identify patterns via close and careful attention.

Articulation: produce considered, evocative, fit-for-purpose, verbal communication

WOVEN

Oral Communication: This Artifact involves your clear articulation of ideas, concepts, and theories in a spoken form in both the Podcast Genre Analysis and in the production of the Podcast itself.

Electronic Communication: You will communicate via podcaster, which requires you to familiarize yourself with recording and editing software and communicating in this form of mass media in your podcaster descriptions.

Written Communication: You will write brief summaries of the scholarship that your group may incorporate into your podcast.

Prompt

As a member of your chosen field, you and an interdisciplinary group of your peers will compose an informative, educational podcast episode of 15-20 minutes in length, while along the way practicing within your chosen fields on an issue in the US South. First, you will be composing a proposal that will also make an argument for why the [fake] LMC Student Podcast Grant Program should be funded relative to its mission to "demonstrate Georgia Tech's interdisciplinary values and teach the general public about important ideas or topics they may not be familiar with."

Argument or Purpose

For your proposal, you are trying to convey the stakes of your work, what products or services you will be contracting with the scholarship funds, and indirectly, how you intent to meet the values of the committee.

Y'all are invested in teaching an interested general public about any idea, topic, or concept, approaching it from an academic perspective while retaining the approachable form of the publically available podcast.

Audience

For your proposal, a group of instructors and faculty members of Georgia Tech that lead the LMC's [fake] Student Podcast Grant Program. You are submitting a proposal to them to garner funds to support your work and research, so you'll need to establish how this work will meet the needs of an informational podcast that is interdisciplinary and interesting for the general public.

For your podcast, the general public, but it is an interested general public--don't assume they know all about your ideas or concepts. (Make an informative podcast y'all would listen to.)

Defining Features

15-20 minutes in total length for the podcast episode, which should frame itself as part of a longer running series.
1-2 sentences for the podcast description
2-5 sentences for the episode description
A compelling logo that has the podcast name, thematically appropriate symbol or imagery, and potential producing entity or tagline.
The inclusion of at least two works of peer-reviewed, academic scholarship relating to the subject at hand
No more than 2 minutes may be taken up with introductions and musical transitions or interludes. No need to 'thank' the LMC's [fake] Student Podcast Grant Program, though normally, they would prefer you give them the shout out.
- Spend a minute up front establishing the hosts, restating the gist of the podcast and episode, and 'teasing' your audience to keep listening with a new angle, an interesting piece of trivia, etc.
- Transitions should be used to help 'break up' longer discussions or stories and should, in this case, be no longer than 10-20 seconds each.
- For example, if you are looking at music as a topic, choose highly exemplative bits from songs to emphasize ideas or points, and ground their presence via analysis of the content. If it's a podcast about bluegrass, then don't just put in a three-minute-long song. Instead, choose a line, melody, riff, or chorus that relates to your overall point, and make sure to explain the song, its writer, what the song is saying or all about, and its relevancy to that overall point.

Process

Collaborative Contracts

You will each compose collaboration contracts. These are documents in which you will each lay out specific roles, set dates and times for future meetings, and set due dates for one another to get materials in time for the craftsperson to assemble the work. These contracts are due in "Artifact 3 Collaborative Contracts" by the beginning of class by Friday, October 20 at 11:59 PM (close to midnight). Only one person needs to submit this file as a pdf.

Finding Peer Reviewed Sources

Your podcast isn't just about 'vibing' on a subject but learning the process for finding and incorporating the work of established, credible scholars to discuss your subject. This is broken into two parts: finding scholarship and communicating about scholarship.

Finding Scholarship

On Thursday, October 19, in class, we will go over resources available for you to find the work of peer-reviewed academic scholars. Using those skills, you will submit pdfs of three peer reviewed academic articles by the beginning of class on Tuesday, October 24 for approval.

Communicating about Scholarship

If this podcast is meant to be interdisciplinary, you must familiarize yourself with the modalities of communication within each field. To this end, each group member will individually submit an original summaries of an article previously approved from above. Please utilize the Summarizing an Academic Article Document to assist with writing your summary, keeping in mind that it is a helpful template that you should or could deviate from to get your ideas and points across. We will be spending Week 9-10 discussing reading and summarizing scholarship, with these summaries being due on Thursday, October 26 by the beginning of class via "Article Summary." A fundamental part of entering a field is to learn to read their privileged genres. In this way, you'll learn how to efficiently read these works and become a more established member of your field and profession.

Podcast Genre Presentation (and Evaluation)

In order to help you through this process (and give you some practice with oral and non-verbal communication), each Team will be reviewing and presenting on the podcast of their choice from the list provided below in Appendix A. These 5-to-8-minute presentations will take place in class on Tuesday, October 31 and Thursday, November 2.

Sign up for your selection at the following links relative to your course section. Do not sign up for one if someone else already has chosen it. This link will go live when I release the sign up sheet.

Tell us about your group's chosen podcast, using one or two episodes as examples to discuss with classmates. Then tell us:

What is the podcast's premise? (check its podcaster information!)
What is the podcast's format? (chat, interview, discussion, dramatization, lecture)
Does it have guests? If so, what kind of guests?
How long has it been or how long did it run?
What is the typical content of an episode? (E.g. analysis of a particular film? A specific topic? historical event? etc.?)
How are episodes structured? What sort of segments do they include? How do they ‘break up’ the content, where, and how often?
Who are the hosts? What kind of people are they? What expertise do they bring?
Who is the podcast's target audience? How do the hosts speak to them or for them?
What's the aesthetic or vibe of the podcast? What does listening to it feel like?

Give a clear oral presentation with a structure that a listening audience can follow. Use pictures of the hosts or the podcast’s logo to help focus your presentation, using excerpts and other information as needed to support your analysis. Keep in mind that if you’re writing a script, most speakers speak 100-150 words per minute, meaning your presentation script could be between 500 and 1200 words. Make sure to rehearse this a few times with your group.

Any presentations you will use must be submitted to me as a .pptx, .pdf, or .ppt document via "Podcast Genre Presentations" in the Artifact 3 Assignment folder or the appropriate week's module.

Podcast Proposal

One member of your group will submit a document with a podcast proposal, written for the [fake] LMC Student Podcast Grant Program. In this document, you should, in a brief, paragraph form answer the following questions:

• Who are the group members?

• How will we portray ourselves as experts on this topic or what roles will we each perform?

• What scholarly materials (two scholarly, peer reviewed articles will suffice) will we use to ground our podcast?

• What is our overall theme or topic?

• How will we structure our engagement with our audience?

• What question do we want to answer or what information do we want to convey?

• What program are we using? How are we recording? What equipment are we using?

• Are we including sound effects? Music? Do we plan to use clips of people speaking, or recording interviews to incorporate? How are we or will we be using sound effects to make our podcast?

• What kind of tones or emotions are we portraying (humorous or serious, formal or informal, for example)? How and why (especially relative or appropriate to the material selected to cover)?

The word count of this document should be between 200-500 words and should be submitted in pdf format listing everyone’s names. This should be submitted by Tuesday, November 7 via the "Podcast Proposal" Assignment page for Peer Review.

Final Deliverables

1) Podcaster Descriptions of Podcast and Episode

2) Logo

3) Audio of the Podcast itself

These should be gathered together within a Youtube video, featuring the logo as the 'video,' the audio of the podcast within the video, and the Podcaster podcast description and episode description as the video description, along with MLA citations of your cited articles. Make sure your uploaded video is provided as a public or unlisted link. Submit this content via the Artifact 3 Final Assignment Page by classtime on Tuesday, November 14.

Podcast Feedback

During our Listening Days on Tuesday, November 14 and Thursday, November 16, you'll 'rate' your peers podcasts. I will provide you with a few criteria, but just respond to the podcasts honestly and provide suggestions. These suggestions will inform the Reflections you will all do. Be critical but constructive. The group with the highest rating will be awarded 5 extra points on their podcast grade (not the unit, but the podcast grade itself.) So, aim to impress your peers.

Peer Assessments

As before, you will assess your peers. However, this time it will be done outside of class, due by Friday, November 17 at 5:00 PM via an Assignment titled "Peer Assessments." Please follow the instructions listed in the assignment. These are anonymous and will not be seen by peers.

Rating ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Your peers will rate your podcast out of five stars, leaving small bits of anonymized feedback and impressions. These will be averaged and given as a percentage. If you get 4/5, that's an 80%.

Reflection

As always, you will need to complete a reflection of your work in Artifact 3. Instead of doing it in class, you'll need to complete this via the Assignment "Artifact 3 Reflection" only once your Artifact 3 has been submitted. This is due by Friday, November 17 at 5:00 PM.