As a strategy to encourage ways to extending the Durban University of Technology’s (DUT’s) engagement with students, the Centre for Excellence in Learning and Teaching (CELT) invited academic staff to their Podcasting Workshop on Conceptualizing a Podcast via Microsoft Teams, recently.
The workshop focused on looking at being an anchor, a podcasting app, how it works, and understanding the various ways to bring podcasting into teaching.
DUT’s Educational Technologist Bwalya Lungu and member of CELT highlighted her presentation on humanising one’s digital spaces.
She currently serves as the eLearning academic support representative for the Faculty of Management Sciences and Faculty of Arts and Design. Bwalya also shares a special interest in innovative use of digital technologies in teaching and learning in higher education.
Her talk looked at what it means to humanise, why it is important to humanise one’s digital spaces and how does one go about humanising one’s digital spaces.
She then explained the ways of approaching podcasting, saying that lecturers can create the audio themselves for the students to download.
“It is often a one-way scope because you are feeding the students information much like a lecture. Also, you must include some way of tracing and assessing the information learned,” she said.
She then shared information pertaining to the formatting of podcasts, saying that it sets the tone for how one’s listeners receive one’s content.
“Different personalities and circumstances would be determining on what kind of a format you chose. Note that you can blend formats too,” she relayed.
She expressed further on the frequency of podcasts, adding that the length of each episode depended on what one’s aim was for creating one, for example an eighth episode series or longer. Bwalya indicated that the publishing schedule was a personal choice and one needs to understand one’s audience as they will factor it into their time.
Besides the formatting, Bwalya conveyed the benefits of creating podcasts which was a great resource for revision, and enhancing and reinforcing student engagement because they expanded on learning styles.
Besides the benefits, Bwalya said there are challenges of having podcasts. She explained that there are data costs involved, time management factors and students not checking and verifying what they are given, to name a few.
At the end of the presentation, Bwalya gave attendees an exercise to set up the podcasting app of their choice and create an episode.
For those who would be interested in a focus group to create a product from start to broadcasting, email bwalyal@dut.ac.za.
Photo credit: Jukka Aalho on Unsplash.
Waheeda Peters
