Real-world learning using a self-paced podcast
The goal of my experiment is to create a self-paced module that is engaging and interactive. I have created a series of YouTube videos (the well-edited ones with animation and stuff) during the covid-19 lockdown last year. Although they are decently entertaining (I would like to think so), I feel like they are not interactive. I had considered using an LMS platform that forces students to interact with the content, but this would require many students to learn a new tool since our university’s LMS is not used across the board. I wanted to create something that is interactive and easy to access/use (no downloading or navigating a new app, no entering password countless times) because my class has 200+ students, and I don’t want hundreds DMs at midnight (yes, Thai students do not email professors, they use chats) saying they cannot access the content or don’t know how to use the tool, etc. So when I learned about how the ITS used audio guides as a teaching tool, I thought this would be perfect to try out.
So I tried creating a podcast for the first time.
My class is a General Education course on the topic of food for health so the content is quite light. The podcast talks about aging and aging society as part of the anti-aging diet series. The podcast starts by asking the listeners to find a place where she/he can observe at least 5 people and to bring some pens and paper (I also let students know beforehand, but just in case). Then after some music break for listeners to settle in, the podcast asks them to closely observe people around them and write down what they see. Then the podcast starts talking about statistics regarding aging population in the world and in Thailand and asks the listeners to imagine that all of the people they see were old. If these people continued what they were doing now, but in the old version of themselves, what problems would they experience? Some music is played while students think about this, and then the podcast resumes and explains common problems old people have. Last, the listeners are asked to redesign the area they are currently in to be more elderly-friendly and solve/alleviate the problems they thought of earlier. Then the listeners zoom out to the society level and write what they would like to see in an ideal aging society. The podcast closes by asking students to submit their notes and drawings on to Padlet.com. The whole podcast is about 25 minutes.
I tested this podcast with 3 Master students since the actual class date has not yet passed. The feedback was good. The students liked the novelty of the podcast and liked being in the real world, seeing things as they listened to the podcast. One student noted that he liked to be ask to think about a concept before the information is given, which he could then use to further his thinking (the exploration before explanation is working here ;)). There are some rooms for improvement though. The students said the podcast is quite long and I could have cut some music to decrease the length of the podcast. They also suggested places where there is a higher chance of seeing older people.
Overall, my takeaways from this experiment is that 1) preparing a script, recording and editing a podcast is a lot of work, 2) the result however is quite positive (still need to get more feedback from the actual class) since it seems to increase students’ engagement and interaction, 3) it proves that asynchronous learning can be very interactive and is not limited to in front of the computer.
I hope that my experiment is helpful in some ways, and I encourage everyone to try a new way of teaching and step out of your comfort zone (I daresay it is quite weird to listen to your own podcast). Thanks for reading!
Siraphat Taesuwan (Fay)
Edited: I launched the podcast for the actual class. Here are some snippets of the students’ work. I was mind blown by their artistic skills :)
