3 Ways Instructional Designers and Teachers Can Use Podcasts in Online Courses

It’s been interesting watching the evolution of podcast usage in online courses. In November of 2019, I wrote a blog post called, “What Instructional Designers Need to Know About Developing Podcasts for Online Courses.” It honestly makes me cringe to read my writings from a year ago, but I want to bring it up because I’m noticing that instructional designers and teachers/instructors are making podcasts! I don’t feel like I’m fighting an uphill battle anymore by telling educators that students are demanding them or don’t recognize that they could be beneficial. In fact, many of my conversations with educators have changed in tone from talking about the why you should use podcasts to how to use podcasts. I understand the confusion though around how to use them properly because podcasts are a unique learning tool. They are flexible in that they can be used in different methods from being a supplemental resource to being the heart of the course.

Below are my three ways that I use podcasts for the courses I teach and design.

Posting Podcasts in Announcements

I recently started using podcasts in announcements, and I have to say, it has quickly become my favorite tool. To tell you the truth, this was a quick pivot of an idea that resonated well with my students. I’m currently teaching a graduate marketing course about the fundamentals of marketing. The course covers typical topics with setting objectives, creating strategies, making a SWOT analysis, etc. While I felt confident in my abilities to teach this content, I realized a huge issue. After responding to all my students in the discussion board, it was apparent that a majority of them wanted to become entrepreneurs. While the course content is general enough to help any career in marketing, it’s incredibly different being a marketing team of one vs being a member of a marketing team. For these students looking to become entrepreneurs, I knew they needed perspectives of marketing on your own. My strategy to do this was to find podcast episodes each week that aligned to the courses’ modules, but provided an entrepreneur perspective.

Here’s my announcement with how I approached this to the class:

“Good morning, Class!

I hope you enjoyed the first week of our course!

It's been wonderful getting to know all of you through the discussion board. You all have a have a wide variety of different backgrounds, industries, educations, and life experiences. Learn and continue to grow from reading about others' perspectives.

After reading through quite a few of the posts, it looks like many of you are considering going down the road of being an entrepreneur or you might be a marketing team of one. While our course material does cover strategies from a team perspective or an individual perspective, I did want to provide an additional resource each week to help with learning about marketing. I'll post a podcast episode per week from an entrepreneurial mindset that revolves around the course's content. This is entirely optional and you do not need to listen the podcasts if you don't want to.

The first podcast episode is about the creator of Foundr Magazine, Nathan Chan. He explains his marketing strategies with launching a digital platform. You can listen to the podcast episode here. The transcript for the episode can be found here. Let me know what you think of this idea and I'll keep on researching more episodes for each module!

As a reminder, your discussion board responses and your first milestone are due by this evening. Feel free to reach out to me if you have any questions.

Thank you!

Dr. Hobson”

It didn’t take long at all to hear feedback from students on how much they appreciated the additional information. Many of them mentioned how they hadn’t thought of the differences of marketing strategies between working at a company and working for yourself. Some of these podcasts cover tools an individual can use right away. Other times, they talk about memberships, how to build an audience, grow an email list, etc. These episodes are catered towards what the module is covering, but expanded upon for an entrepreneur. If you don’t have the time, budget, or resources to create your own podcast, try this method. Search for the top-rated shows on Apple Podcasts within your area. There is a podcast out there for just about anything, so I’m sure you can find an episode that will align with your course’s content. Either way, make sure to vet the episode and find the transcripts if they are available. This is a simple yet effective way to make the learning experience better.

Creating Podcasts as Additional Resources

This suggestion is based off of my own research with learners from a leadership program for technical professionals. During the pilot program, myself and my colleagues interviewed learners to ask about their experiences with the courses. After speaking with several learners, it was clear that they wanted more examples of the course content, but didn’t have time to watch videos or read articles. I asked further clarifying questions about what particularly was taking up the majority of their time. I was able to piece together that the commute was the most significant obstacle. While this research was done pre-COVID-19, an argument can also be made that constantly sitting in front of laptop screen has made us listen to podcasts more with a recent publishing showing global podcast consumption increasing by 42% (Amburgey, 2020). The consumption data seems to be linked to purpose of the podcast. Some podcasts aren’t being listened to because they aren’t relevant anymore, while other topics now have the spotlight.

My purpose for this podcast was to address the need that students wanted to learn more, but needed the delivery method in a more flexible way. After some strategic planning, a podcast was made that was in the form of a story telling podcast. Pre-recorded interviews on the course’s subject matter was turned into a news reporting type of show, where I was the narrator describing the experiences of how students have applied the course’s content in real life. If pre-recorded interviews are not available, another strategy is to record a Q&A type episode with the instructor/SME. This could be a live webinar that’s recorded or something planned ahead of time. This will address common questions and will provide more insight into the subject matter.

You can listen to the podcast episodes here to give you an idea of the story telling format. These episodes were placed in the LMS underneath the resources tab:

All of these podcasts were made publicly available. So, if students wanted to stream them on their podcast player of choice, they could do so. If they wanted to download them to their phone, that was also possible. The transcripts were provided to them in the course if they preferred to read the content rather than listen. Also, this resource helped with providing perspective learners a snapshot of what the program offered. That wasn’t the intention at first, but it was recognized as a marketing tool for future learners.

If you are looking for the technical components of making a podcast, I use Libsyn as my RSS feed. For my microphone, I use an ATR-2100 microphone that plugs directly into my USB port. For recording and editing, I use Garageband (for solo shows), and Squadcast (for interviews).

Teaching with Podcasts

This last point needs a bit of explanation before I dive into how I started incorporating this method into courses. After helping hundreds of instructional designers, I realized how much I truly enjoyed it. This blog and podcast after all were created to share my experiences and teach you what I’ve learned along my career. Wanting to save instructional designers and teachers time while helping them every step along the way has led me down a path to start my own online academy and the pilot program is beginning soon. As a side note, if you want to be updated about this new online academy, be sure to sign up for my mailing list.

What I didn’t realize would happen with designing this pilot program was that I would be more creative than ever! It had to follow a Universal Design for Learning (UDL) framework and provide more opportunities for learning. The folks in this pilot program are going to be instructional designers and teachers so the delivery of content clearly had to be at a high level! After thinking more about it, I decided that every time there was writing in the course, I would read it like a script for a podcast. I compiled all of the writing found within the course into a Google Doc, and batch recorded the whole thing. I was then able to divide the recordings into sections and embed them into the course itself:

Since this is essentially a private audio clip, a typical podcast provider won’t work. There isn’t a way to make a podcast private as it links to an RSS feed so any subscriber of yours could listen to it. To make these clips, I uploaded them individually into Soundcloud and set them as private. From there, I found the embed code and placed it into the HTML on the LMS.

Something unique with this process is that these clips can be embedded anywhere in an LMS, including an assignment area. From experience, I know that students will typically read the instructions of an assignment a few times to make sure they comprehend all of the requirements. To help with this comprehension, I recorded clips reading the instructions to the assignments and placed them directly into the submission area. I don’t have evidence to support what I’m about to say next, but my best educated guess is that being able to read and listen to the instructions will develop more confidence in how to complete the assignment.

Another thing I wasn’t expecting was that if edited properly, these clips can become one giant podcast episode for the course. In theory, if a learner isn’t able to sit at their desk, they could download the podcast episode and play it wherever they are. One piece of feedback I have heard from learners for years is that they wish there was an easy way to revisit a course’s material months down the road. Most courses close after a period of time and this might be one way to reduce the barriers of trying to remember key takeaways from those courses. Time will tell.

Overall, podcasts are incredible and can be used as an additional resource or the backbone of a course. It’s another tool for the instructional design and teaching toolkit on how to make the learning experience even better.

Reference:

Amburgey, I. (2020). COVID-19’s Impact on Podcast Listening. Retrieved from: https://blog.voxnest.com/coronavirus-impact-on-podcast-listening/

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