Instructional Podcasts

Make podcasts authentic.

Teacher Presence

Podcasts inherently create a greater sense of intimacy than other content types (e.g. video, PowerPoint, infographic), so capitalize on the strengths of this medium by using more narrative and personal approaches to your content. Share stories; speak to students directly and informally — this is an opportunity to connect with your students more personally, which engages them in the learning (student-to-teacher engagement).

Diverse Perspectives

In addition to your own perspective, consider including other voices and perspectives in your podcast. In the same way that you provide text materials from differing viewpoints, incorporate those voices into your podcasting when appropriate (part of the Design for Learning Framework under “Humanized Environment” of Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy [CSP]).

Make podcasts engaging.

As humans, we are hardwired to connect with stories. If you start your podcast with a good hook (e.g. ask a question or pose a mystery), your audience will be captivated by your story. Like all Digital Storytelling projects, podcasts are about the emotional connection; that’s what will engage your listeners (“Social Belonging” in CSP).

Organized

An unorganized podcast can make it difficult for students to stay engaged and/or keep track of the content. A clear sequence of ideas/thoughts, with effective transitions, goes a long way to help with this. Be sure to highlight the key ideas in your podcast with emphasis or signaling (UDL checkpoint 3.2). This is where having a good outline or script comes in handy (for info on podcast outlining/scripting, check out Create a Podcast from the Tech Support Knowledge Base).

Chunked

Keep your podcasts on the shorter side. If you are recording weekly overviews, just focus on the highlights. Podcasting lends itself to an episodic format, so you can easily parse out course concepts into short segments. Chunking helps students manage cognitive load (UDL checkpoint 3.3). This also makes it easy for students to find specific content when they review.

Opportunity for AI Exploration: One way that generative AI tools (like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude) can help you improve your instructional materials is to ask it for recommendations about chunking. If you’re comfortable sharing it, you could enter your podcast script into the AI tool and ask it where effective breaks would be.

Provide options for student response and reflection.

Students will get more out of your podcasts if they have a chance to respond or reflect on the content (student-to-content engagement). After listening to the podcast, you can encourage (or require) students to

• answer knowledge check questions
• ask their own clarifying questions
• provide comments and/or reactions
• summarize or re-explain content

This will deepen their understanding and provide an option for you to correct any misunderstandings.

Model ethical behavior.

By modeling appropriate strategies for accessibility and digital citizenship, you provide examples to your students and clearly demonstrate the importance of ethical behavior when producing your own content.

Accessible to Everyone

Consider students who may have different cultural backgrounds. Be careful not to make assumptions about what your students already know based on how they look or how they speak. When creating your video content, be sure to clarify and/or provide background knowledge if you include references to

• Regional customs
• Unique vocabulary
• Figurative language
  • Idioms
  • Symbols
  • Metaphors
• Pop culture events or people

In addition to considering accessibility in the content of your podcast (what), consider how to plan for accessibility in the delivery of your podcast (how). To make your podcast accessible, you’ll want to share a text transcript. If you used a script to record the podcast, you can share the script as your transcript. If not, like in the case of an interview, the audio will need to be transcribed. You could use a live transcription service like Maestra’s Web Captioner to get you started. Providing a transcript helps those with a physical disability as well as language learners and those with cognitive processing issues. It’s UDL in action!

Digital Citizenship

Respecting copyright is the responsibility of all content producers. You are responsible for citing the work of others, obtaining permissions, and crediting the proper people and resources. Any audio or text that is trademarked or copyrighted by other creators must be properly credited and you must have prior permission for it to be included in your production. In particular for podcasting, any audio effects or music tracks should be cleared for use and cited.

Remember copyright applies to your work too. How do you want to share your podcast? Will you choose to keep it private to your students or share it with a Creative Commons license?

Another aspect to digital citizenship that you can model in your podcasts is information validation. When we present information to students, there is an inherent trust that, as educators, we are sharing information from credible and accurate sources. Encourage students to think critically about where information comes from by describing your own information validation process, particularly on controversial topics.