[00:00:00] Bonni Stachowiak: Today on episode number 381 of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast, Barbi Honeycutt joins me to talk about how to use podcasts in teaching.

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[00:00:13] Production Credit: Produced by Innovate Learning Maximizing Human Potential.

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[00:00:22] Bonni: Welcome to this episode of Teaching in Higher Ed. I’m Bonni Stachowiak and this is the space where we explore the art and science of being more effective at facilitating learning. We also share ways to improve our productivity approaches so we can have more peace in our lives and be even more present for our students.

I’m excited to be welcoming to the show today, Dr. Barbi Honeycutt. She’s a teaching and learning consultant, speaker, author and podcaster. She’s the founder of her own Educational Consulting Company based in Raleigh, North Carolina, Barbi creates virtual professional development programs, workshops and courses for college professors, graduate students, post-doctoral scholars and faculty development professionals who want to increase student engagement and improve learning.

Dr. Honeycutt is the creator and host of the Lecture Breakers podcast, which you’ll hear about in today’s episode and the virtual summer conference. Throughout the past 20 years, Dr. Honeycutt has facilitated thousands of professional development events for educators from around the world, representing nearly every academic discipline and profession within industry, education, government and nonprofit settings. Barbi Honeycutt, welcome to Teaching in Higher Ed.

[00:01:52] Barbi Honeycutt: Thank you, Bonni. It is so great to be here.

[00:01:55] Bonni: I love getting to talk to you, even though I feel like we talk to each other all the time.

[laughter]

Just not in a synchronous way. Today, it is synchronously because I listened to your podcast of course and I’ve followed your work for such a long time. It’s great to have this conversation.

[00:02:09] Barbi: Thank you and likewise, I’ve been following your podcast for a long time and I am super excited that we could get together. I want to formally extend the invitation on air to make sure that hopefully we can get you on my podcast as well, because I just love the work you’re doing in this space. I think our work intersects a lot.

[00:02:26] Bonni: I love the name of your podcast. Lecture Breakers I realize is the idea of taking breaks, but also just breaking things, breaking the norms, changing things up is such an important part of learning. I think you have a great name for that podcast and I’ve really enjoyed learning from you and your guests.

[00:02:44] Barbi: Thank you. The Lecture Breakers is all about breaking up those lectures and all the different ways that we can do that. It’s all about increasing student engagement and improving learning and not talking at our students, getting away from the podium and all those creative ways that we can do it.

When first started doing this work, I did a lot with flipped classrooms and I was like, “Man, there’s so many other ways that we can be creative with our lectures. We don’t just have to flip them. There’s so many things we can do.” When I created the podcast, I wanted to be able to capture as many of those stories and strategies as I could from so many creative educators.

That’s exactly what we’ve been able to do. I’m really excited. We’re coming up on 100 episodes at the time of this recording. I’m pretty proud of that.

[00:03:24] Bonni: Oh, congratulations. We actually both have something huge we’re celebrating. The day that this episode airs, which is September 30th, 2021, by the way, even if you’re listening later, you can still celebrate with Barbi and I. Barbi, what are we celebrating today?

[00:03:41] Barbi: We are celebrating International Podcast Day, which I have just learned about. I did not celebrate it last year because I didn’t know it was a thing, but now I’m really excited. I want to make sure that we are sharing all the amazing podcasts that are out there, whether they’re in education or not, because I listened to a lot of different ones and get a lot of ideas from a lot of different podcasters out there. I’m really excited to share this day with you and your listeners.

[00:04:06] Bonni: We weren’t sure what we should gift each other for the occasion but I think what I’ll be gifting to you, Barbi, and hopefully to others is I’ll be updating my list of favorite podcasts that I enjoy listening to because it’s been a while since I updated that and it definitely has changed.

I’ll also link over Brian Alexander often does this too and I’ll link to whatever he has as his most recent list of podcasts he enjoys. He’s actually the person who inspired me many years ago to start a list of my own and categorize those things so it’ll be fun.

[00:04:35] Barbi: Awesome. I’ll definitely put together some kind of top 10 list or something. I’ll be able to share that as well.

[00:04:41] Bonni: On today’s episode, we’re going to be exploring how do we use podcasts in our teaching and the first bit of advice, by the way, I’m not going to end here. Don’t panic with what I’m about to say, but the first bit of advice is counterintuitive and it’s to not make a podcast.

Secret surprise, spoiler alert, at the end of today’s episode, we will tell you how to create a podcast if you change your mind and decide to go against this advice. Barbi, I just find so much of the time people think that to enter into the world of podcasting, there is one route and that route is to record one’s lectures.

What we end up finding out in that process is that our lectures don’t always translate well into a podcast medium and also, that there are other entities that have invested a tremendous amount of money and time and expertise and to making things that I personally can’t fathom [laughs] ever making myself.

The idea we first want to explore here is just the tension between curation versus creation. I know we are going to be talking about creation, how to create your own podcast at the end, but would you talk a little bit about what your thoughts are around the power of curating podcast resources?

[00:06:06] Barbi: I think this is a great piece of advice for faculty, as we are thinking about how to leverage the power of podcast in our courses. Audio is a powerful medium, but as you just said, if you’re going to just hit record on a lecture that you’re giving, it’s amazing how many times we refer to a chart or a diagram or we have a quote on the screen that we’re reading that we want to share with our students.

That’s not going to translate in the audio space, in the podcast space. It’s not as easy as just hitting record or ripping out the audio from some lecture that you recorded. That’s not the goal right now at this stage.

What we’re trying to do is encourage listeners to think about how you can find these amazing podcasts that are already out there that integrate with your course, your learning outcomes, your course goals, your course topic and leverage that. As you said, there are so many podcasters out there who have funneled so much time, resources, money.

They’ve done the research for you and you can grab pieces of an episode or a series of episodes and use that as supplemental or complimentary material in your course and really bring that course material to life. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel. You don’t have to create everything from scratch because podcasts are hard work.

It’s been and I’m speaking to a podcaster so you know this, it’s not as easy as hitting record and just recording your voice and calling it a day. There’s a lot that goes into producing podcasts on the back end. I think it’s really wise to go into this, having this conversation upfront before we kind of start sharing how to actually do this in the classroom.

[00:07:49] Bonni: I have a colleague who teaches US Government and she really wants to bring a lot of life and vibrance into that class. Of course, today, given how polarizing things can be in a class such as that, also to help people enter into those conversations in a less threatening way.

I told her about a season of the More Perfect podcast. What they did was they looked at the 27 amendments to the United States Constitution. Rather than give lectures on them, they had some famous and some not known at all musicians get together and write songs about them.

Some artists you would recognize like Dolly Parton wrote a song or maybe you’ve heard of the band called The Mellow Tones. All kinds of musicians came together and put their own spin for each one of those amendments. Of course, we can analyze the lyrics then, and then they did what are called liner notes.

Barbi, I’m going to laugh a little bit at this. I had to teach some of my younger colleagues but liner notes are– but we used to have things called albums and we would play them [laughs] on record players and on the back or even some cases inside where the liner notes, who wrote the song, who played the drums, et cetera. They have the liner notes for the 27 album that contains all these different songs.

Imagine all the different ways that students might be able to engage with this content in– where we don’t have to just start out with debating before we really understand the terms, how did this amendment come about? What some of the history. I think it’s just a wonderful example.

I don’t think I’ll ever find myself in a place where I’m going to be able to have people write songs about whatever [laughs] it is I have to communicate but I can put together playlists. We’re actually about to have our faculty gathering, coming up here soon as of us recording this. We’re even putting together a playlist of songs that are around the theme for the gathering.

There’s all kinds of ways we can use music and then we can use lyrics and then we can use these liner notes to really liven up our content. That’s just one example, Barbi and I both encourage you to think about and explore all of the possible ways you could bring in that disciplinary knowledge and some amazing ways.

[00:10:19] Barbi: Well, and Bonni, I was just going to say, most podcasts right now are free. You can just do the search, grab what you want, integrate it into your course, and you don’t have that barrier of a paywall for most podcasts. Like you said, you can get Dolly Parton and integrate that into your course, which is amazing.

It also gives you the chance to bring the most current perspectives or different perspectives into your course, which you may or may not be able to do if you’re creating it on your own. I love to listen to people who have different opinions on a particular topic. I’ve recently started listening to a podcast called The Rewatchables, and it’s just a group of people who get together and they rewatch some of the most interesting movies, like the Terminator or Good Fellas or Jaws.

They talk about it, but they analyze it not only as a fan but like from movie critics and things like that. It’s amazing all of the things that you can think about how to integrate into a course, and like you say, you can curate that, you can integrate it in a strategic way with your learning outcomes and really bring it to life in a way that you may not have been able to if you were creating it on your own.

[00:11:25] Bonni: In terms of how we might structure podcasts as a content entity inside of our class, what are some of the different ways that you see people make use of them in terms of different methods or approaches for organizing classes?

[00:11:39] Barbi: Oh, it’s a great question. I definitely want you to share your story that you shared before you hit record about how you’ve done it. I think people can take two podcast episodes, they’re about, that’s the same topic and you can have students compare and contrast the two.

What are the different opinions? What are the different research points that they’re bringing in? What are the different outcomes or findings? I think that that could be a great way to do it.

You can have students listen to a podcast or a piece of a podcast and post their favorite quote or the most controversial quote or a quote they disagree with just to get some conversation going. I’ve seen people invite the podcast host or guest into their courses and continue a conversation that once they listen to one episode, then they, the students write a list of questions and say, here’s more questions we have about this topic and actually bring in the host or the guest.

For me, just as a sidebar, I’ve been using podcasts over the last year and a half in my faculty development workshops. Faculty, it’s almost like flipping it with a podcast, so faculty listen to an episode. I usually let them choose between one or two or three episodes, and then we have a conversation about it.

What are the key points? What do they want to share in their courses? What were they surprised to hear? You can do that same type of format, in your courses with your students. It could be another way to flip it and allow for more engagement interaction that’s an alternative to reading a book or reading the textbook or watching a video.

[00:13:05] Bonni: You mentioned that we don’t have to use a podcast in its entirety. There are some tools that are allowing us to select clips out of them. I use a app called Overcast that’s on the iOS, the iPhone universe, and it allows me to just take out a clip of, I think, up to 90 seconds, although I may be off on that a bit, and be able to share that.

I can share it. I actually often share it to myself via email, and then I can post that inside the learning management system if I just wanted to capture a little bit of the story, but of course, students can do that as well. Overcast is not the only app that does that, it was just among the first and now, so many of the other ones are offering that as a feature.

This American Life has that built into a website where you can go and take a clip. The nice part about that is it includes transcripts, so the video file that gets generated has both the audio, but it also has the captions that are appearing with it, and it’s really nicely done. You can have the little selector of exactly what content, what portion of the audio you’d like to select.

There’s really a great way to take little pieces of This American Life, which of course is just such a phenomenal storytelling podcast that’s been around for a very long time and tells very compelling stories about a lot of different things that could show up within our various disciplines.

One thing that has come up on the podcast actually a few times now is the idea of times for telling, Derek Breth is the person who first introduced me to this particular phrase. The idea here is that rather than to begin lecturing to you about the five ways that such and such happens and all this stuff and getting into the process, I can start out by capturing your imagination, getting you curious, getting you wondering what on earth is happening in order to earn a little bit of attention.

That we might be more willing to pay attention to some of the less stimulating parts of what someone has to share if it started out with something that really got us curious and got us thinking. Derek way back when he came on the first time, talked about those Mentos experiments, where you put the Mentos and the diet Coke and it explodes and then kids are like, “Wait, why does it happen with diet Coke, but it doesn’t happen with regular Coke?”

Getting all those questions out around our disciplines, it creates times for telling and podcasts can do that for us as well. Maybe we just do a clip or maybe it’s a nice short one that was designed to be in little bite-size pieces just from the very beginning. Then that gets us asking lots of questions.

When issues, I teach a business ethics course, and when issues around disability and discrimination come up, I’ll generally have them listen to a podcast that explores some of these issues first.

Then we can have those discussions where they understand a little bit more of some of the tensions and nuances around this particular type of discrimination. Another big way besides times for telling has to do with prediction, and Barbi, I don’t know if you’ve ever played around with prediction in any of your teachings. I first heard about out it from James Lang in his first edition of Small Teaching, and of course, now he has his second one out.

All of the research that shows that rather than me tell you, 44% of people think this, or do this or whatever to say, Barbi, how many, what percentage of people do you think do X, Y, or Z, that there’s gonna be a lot more retention around that 44% than if I just told you in the first place. You can use podcasts to do that prediction, including I listened to– I have students listen to one around a currency crisis that occurred in Brazil many years ago, and it’s a 15-minute podcast on the show called Planet Money.

It’s perfect because just around the seven or six-minute mark, I can press pause and it has defined the problem of how they would go and their money was worth $50 one day and $500 the next and back down to $50, and they lost trust in their currency as a society and a culture. Then I press pause and I say, “What would you do if you were brought in to try to solve this problem?”

Then I have them discuss it, document what they think they would do or what they think the economists suggested, and then press play and let them hear the end. I know you’ve got an example, Barbi, of how we can bring movement in with podcasting as well.

In fact, a book to share, and the author came on your podcast as well. Could you talk about how we might have people moving while they’re listening to podcasts and how that relates to the research on learning?

[00:18:17] Barbi: First of all, let me just say, I love your prediction format for a podcast. That was the one I was hoping you would share because you just have me thinking of, I mean, that’s such a great platform if you’re teaching teachers or future business leaders or anybody to make the ethics courses. They’re making those hard decisions to give them information and then stop it there and then let them take it.

I think that’s a fantastic way to leverage podcasts in a classroom and allow the professor to be that guided on the side, if you will, instead of telling all of the information and all of the answers. I just wanted to give a shout-out for that because I love that format. Yes, Susan Rock came on my podcast and I should have tagged the episode.

I’ll make sure that I’ll send you that for the show notes, but yes, she was talking about movement and the importance of movement. Her book is called Minding Bodies. It’s all about the power of connection between what we’re learning and what our bodies are doing and the environmental space that we’re in.

Things like taking a walk while you’re listening to the podcast can really help you decide, make decisions about depends on the topic, but what kind of ideas you might get? Say, if you’re listening to this podcast while you’re taking a walk, it might give you new ideas for your teaching.

The disadvantage there is you might not have a notepad and pen to write everything down but to somehow capture of that or tag that. When I was talking with her and when I was reading her book, what struck me is that, the way that she describes teaching and learning, being this all-inclusive type of experience.

Not just sitting behind a computer or not just sitting down, writing something, it becomes, what are the smells? What are the sounds? What am I looking at? It’s like everything. What struck me here is that I tend to do that when I am working with children. When I’m teaching my son, I’m all like– If we go outside, I’m like, “What does this flower smell? What does it feel like? What color is it? Where is it located? What kind of environment is it in? Do you think other flowers can grow here?”

We just had this whole conversation about this flower in its environment and we’re out and we’re exploring it and we’re doing all these things. I tend to associate movement with children learning. I don’t know why, but for some reason, I haven’t done that when teaching college students or adults.

She really makes a fantastic case for why we should bring all of this into our teaching and learning. In her case, it’s like you go down in the stacks and in the stacks, that’s where you can touch and feel and smell the artifacts of all the books throughout history that have been written.

There’s just nothing like that and it really brings it to life for students. I think podcasts can be a medium for which that could happen, whether it’s as simple as taking a walk, reflecting on your teaching and what you’re doing, and then coming back and implementing something you learned.

[00:21:11] Bonni: Oh, my gosh, yes. I think sometimes we, including me, tend to take this a little bit too literally. Are you telling me to bring in– My mom and I just went for a hike with the kids the other day, and we both were sharing how much we love the smell of manure, and apparently, that has not been passed on to the children as a side note, because they remind us of things.

We’re not literally telling you to bring manure or flowers or whatever your favorite smells are into your classroom, but what I have found about podcasting, just like a good book is that we’re carrying those with us already. Podcasting is a very intimate medium if you do it well because you can bring people to places in their imagination and they are bringing the smells with them.

They’re bringing the visuals with them. It’s hard to explain unless you really are into podcasts and have had that experience where you literally feel like you’re traveling to Brazil and you’re literally feeling like you’re experiencing what that would have been like to have had your money in the bank and not know if it was going to be there or worth anything the next day and those feelings that you might be experiencing.

That’s what I find fascinating about her work, as it relates to podcasts, both because we don’t have to be tied inside of a classroom or behind a computer. That’s an aspect of it that I find really beneficial, but then also what good stories can do, whether they be in books or whether they be in our ears, to help take us to places in our imagination and I just love that. That works in any discipline.

[00:22:49] Barbi: Absolutely. I will say, I don’t recommend bringing manure to your class, but if you can bring a leaf or rock or whatever it is you’re studying and you bring that in and let students touch it and see it and whatever that could be, bring that to life for them.

If you combine that with audio, maybe you– I know we’re not talking about creation yet, but there could be a podcast out there that’s like, “You’re taking a walk through the woods. What do you notice?” More like a meditation type of podcast that could be combined with some intentional observation and movement because you’re out in the world.

I do not know if those podcasts exist. I am sure they do, but I think that there are so many possibilities here with how you can use the power of audio, and then when you integrate movement and you really start thinking about what are students touching, seeing, hearing, smelling, feeling? All of those things can really create a very immersive and memorable running experience.

[00:23:42] Bonni: Those are such good examples because the ones I was talking about is where the storyteller or the content creator takes us on a journey with them, but a lot of wonderful storytellers and people that can help engage us to get us to be more present in the moment and the spaces and places where we are.

Our daughter’s teacher doing some portion of the remote learning would say, “Look around you, and can you go find something like this?” She’s teaching math, but she’s teaching math in their context. Sometimes they would have, “Can you have them bring a deck of cards with them?”

Instead of just being sitting in front of a screen, just like you were talking about, instead of the leaf, in this case, it’s a deck of cards and it’s the tangible and physical and something that I can touch where I can take my own environment and something tactile and bring it in. I think that’s wonderful anytime I find where someone is doing audio because again, it is such an intimate medium.

A lot of people listen using headphones, so we’re talking to them right inside their ears and to be able to say, “How are you feeling right now?” or “What do you think he did next?”

[00:24:59] Barbi: I agree.

[00:25:00] Bonni: “What kinds of questions do you find you wrestle with as you’re hearing this story unfold?” Just to help that person get in touch with that, it’s a wonderful way to connect and then bring back that attention. That’s another thing I really took away from another of James Lang’s book called Distracted is we can never have someone’s attention 100% of the time.

It’s all just a question of, “Are we bringing them back into attention or driving them away?” I find that a lot less pressure to put on myself, but what can I be doing to bring them back? That can be so good.

[00:25:34] Barbi: Well, and speaking of the attention piece, as it is right now, what I’ve seen with podcasting as compared to video is that with video, you capture your audience’s attention and if you can keep them there, like on YouTube for 10 minutes, that’s amazing. It’s like the videos are short and sweet, 2 minutes, 5 minutes, 10 minutes, and what we’ve seen with podcasting is that podcasting has more retention.

People who listen to podcasts tend to– Once they find the podcast they’re looking for, they’ll stay there and listen to the whole thing. If you have a 30-minute podcast, they’ll listen to the whole 30 minutes. If you have an hour podcast, they’ll listen to the whole hour.

It’s amazing that we’re seeing our audiences and our students and our learners, they’re hanging on for the whole duration of the episode, rather than skipping around so much like we see with video. It’s really interesting, I’m curious to know more research on this, but that’s where we are now and what we’re learning about the power, as you say, in the intimacy of podcasting.

[00:26:35] Bonni: If anyone’s interested in the body of research and some of the data that– I’m saying research, what I really mean is data analytics. The phrase that one of the companies has coined is called the share of the ear.

Many of us have heard of market share, how much market share does Apple have versus computers that have Windows installed? What’s that market share look like? What’s the market share of a certain brand of this versus the other?

We’re used to hearing market share, but this is a company that looks at where are our ears going? As in what percentage of us are listening to the radio? What percentage of us are listening to podcasts and even more granularly in the world of podcasts, where do we tend to listen to them, and for how long?

I will link to Edison research that has that share of the research. It’s more if you’re really want to geek out on the world of what’s happening in terms of market share and where people are listening. I think it’s worth browsing. I always find it interesting when I go and take a peek at it.

I don’t peek at it every year, but I just was up there the other day because someone interviewed me about podcasting and I thought, I’d go and see what they’ve been up to lately.

It’s just a fascinating thing. Well, we said we would end the episode talking about– I started by saying, “Don’t create a podcast.” and now I’m going to say, “Do create a podcast.”

Barbi, what are some good examples of when it’s going to be worth it to invest the time and the resources and occasionally money, although you can get by with some less expensive equipment, but when is this thing called creating my own podcast going to be worth it in your mind?

[00:28:19] Barbi: That’s such a great question, and coming at it from being a faculty member, it’s really important to think about how the process of creating a podcast, as well as the content of the podcast connects to your learning outcomes and your course goals. You want to make sure that those things are in alignment because otherwise it just doesn’t make sense, and then you’re going to get frustrated, your students are going to get frustrated.

You really want to take a close look at that. I know I’ve had a lot of guests on my show who have talked about the importance of helping students learn what they’re calling transferable skills. The ability to be comfortable with technology and know-how to create things using technology. Not just use it as a place for finding research, but actually leveraging it to create something.

If that is one of your goals is for students to be able to do that, then great. Podcast as a creation, as an assignment, could absolutely fit within that. I’ve also had several podcasts guests who have created podcasts on their own, but I’ve had more of them co-create podcasts with their students, and some of those podcasts live beyond the scope of the course.

I know in particular there’s been a couple, their topic is related to science or health. The students, they started the podcast in the course, they learned how it went. It might’ve been a limited series and then they kept it going. That’s just been amazing to hear.

You may just never know what kind of spark you might light in a student once you give them the tools and the resources to create something like this. I think that’s number one, is just really thinking about how does the process of creating a podcast as well as the content really connect to those learning outcomes and those goals? If creating a podcast yourself is part of the goal here, then it’s important to ask why. You don’t want to do it just to say, “Oh, okay. Well, now my audio version of my lecture is available for students.” That’s not really good enough.

We want to make sure that if you’re using the audio medium that whatever it is you’re sharing in your lecture, it fits within that medium. Like you were just talking about storytelling, which is so powerful in audio. Can that be a way that you use podcasts in your course where you share the story on the podcast but then your lecture and your follow up and your facilitation of it happens during class time so to speak?

There’s a lot of different ways you can do this. One of the great things about podcasts is they come in all shapes and sizes. You mentioned a 15-minute podcast, there’s 2-minute podcast, there’s daily podcasts, there’s delimited series podcast. Maybe you only do it for the first half of the semester or just for one semester.

There’s so many ways, it doesn’t have to be a weekly hour-long podcast. You can do something very creative if you wanted to within your course. I do think you have to think about how does this supports my learning outcomes and how does it help my students be successful in this course and beyond.

[00:31:16] Bonni: I have found some people, we’re coming to this again, don’t fully recognize the barriers that people could potentially experience. My suggestion would be either the whole class is going to do this and maybe each group takes an episode.

You’re literally making one episode across as an 8-week term or is it a 16– it depends on how your quarters or your terms are structured but rather than everybody is going to in two weeks make an episode– it’s a lot more work needs to go into it to getting everybody up to the level where they feel like they can contribute. I would either say, it’s got to be over a longer stretch of time than you might realize.

Some universities actually have it whether it’s in their library or through another resource on campus where they’ll help your students with editing the audio and all of that. There’s a lot of work that needs to go into it like that. That’s going to take some time and we want to be careful not to make assumptions, “Oh, everyone’s edited audio before. Surely they’ve done that.”

Though these things, if you’re going to ask someone who’s never done it before, that is going to be pretty time-intensive and you want to make sure that there are the supports to do it. What I have found helpful, Barbi, is if I’m not, I’m reluctant to go all-in because of just we’re not what working very well and it wasn’t even me that wanted to do it, it was the class that wanted to do it and I went along with it but it caused a lot of friction where people just– It was too short of a time and they got angry with each other and the process and all of that.

Rather than that not to give it as an option for this assignment that maps to the learning outcomes that is about getting these transferable skills more comfortable with technology, you could do a podcast episode or you could do this and give them multiple avenues where if they want to go for it, “Oh, my gosh. How fun is that when they have that kind of agency to explore something that they’ve always wanted to do?”

I had that most recently when I taught this doctoral class on technology and leadership and these women were just completely jazzed. They created a logo for their podcast, they had the whole thing. It’s so fun when you see people really catch fire with what’s possible and they’re not doing it because they have to. That was so fun.

I was thinking, “My gosh, you really took it so far,” and it’s because they really wanted to and they planned on continuing it even after the class was over. That’s just the best of all world, isn’t it? When they’re just so wrapped up in what’s possible with this new thing.

[00:33:55] Barbi: I will say that I love that you are bringing in choice. That’s been a very common theme on my podcast and we’re talking about student motivation and engagement, assessment, creativity, and being able to offer choice to students, I think is just so powerful. You can have them.

As you said you clearly had a group of students who were super excited about the podcast platform and so they jumped in and created something amazing. The same thing could be said for a student who wants to start a YouTube channel and just gets really excited about it and maybe their learning curve is not as steep as somebody who just does not care about that medium.

If you want to get down to the nitty-gritty, I spend between 2 and 5 hours editing my podcast for a 30-minute episode. It can take a long time depending on how many things we have to edit down and cut down. I have edited all 100 episodes of my podcast myself, I have not hired out yet.

That’s something that I wanted to do eventually but I wanted to learn the process so I would know what’s involved and it is a lot of work but I love it. I really, really enjoy it. I’m excited about it.

I think if I were a student in a classroom right now, say, would return back to school and I was given the choice to say, “Hey, Barbi. You want to write this paper or do this YouTube video series or a podcast?” I would jump all on an assignment about a podcast because I have the skills and the tools and I know how to do it and I would love to experiment even more and advance that opportunity to share that with my colleagues and other students.

I love that you’re giving students choice. If we’re talking about creating a podcast here, that sounds like we’re talking about two different options. One, is a faculty member creating a podcast within his or her or their course or students creating a podcast as an assignment?

A lot that could be done there. A lot of creativity can happen in the classroom. I guess it just depends on what are learning outcomes again? What is the goal? What are we trying to do here and then how can you leverage students’ interests and professional goals as well?

[00:35:55] Bonni: Barbi, I’m so glad that you mentioned the timeframe that you use because you mentioned you’ve done the editing on all 100 episodes, so you’re now spending between 2 and 5 hours to get that 30-minute episode out there. You’ve been at this for a while. [chuckles]

[00:36:11] Barbi: Yes.

[00:36:12] Bonni: I think those estimates, we, fortunately, were able to outsource our editing some time ago and then we also outsource things like actually putting the audio file up on our podcast host platform. I don’t do that. That we’re fortunate.

My husband also has a podcast so we’re fortunate that we’re able to pay other people to do that for us now. I think that your two to five hours, if I totaled up all time that we’re paying those two individuals to do that work, I’m probably right in the same ballpark as you probably closer to four to five if I include the other things like we make quote graphics and the show notes and all that stuff.

[00:36:48] Barbi: Show notes, yes.

[00:36:50] Bonni: Well, and that’s not even in my case, including the interview and setting up the interview and prepping for the interview. Mine’s probably, I don’t know. It depends on if I’m reading the book or not?

[laughter]

[00:37:02] Barbi: I can include all that. Sometimes there is the prep, there’s finding the speakers, there’s the guests and doing the research on them. Yes, there’s a lot into it but just the actual.

I took a course to learn how to do podcasting and I spent about six weeks taking that course working through it at my own pace so that I had it on the end. This doesn’t even include like how to get up the speed with the technology and the tools and how to structure a really good interview and conversation.

There’s a lot that goes into it, there’s a lot you can streamline. Again, you don’t have 100 weeks in a semester, so you have to really concentrate and think about, “Is this worth the time? What are we going to do here?” Like you say, it’s something that could be an option or a choice.

[00:37:46] Bonni: I think this is going to be a great time for us to shift over to the recommendation segment because I know speaking of editing, our podcast editor jokes and says that sometimes we pay him too much money for editing for length and we could just buy ourselves a clock. Haha. Thanks, Andrew. [laughs]

I’m going to shift us over now to the time in the show where we recommend things but I’m going to continue on what you were just saying, Barbi. You mentioned taking a course and you made me think that I took a course not how to actually build the podcast because my husband went through a course about what equipment should you buy and how do you hook it all together and all the editing and stuff.

I ended up taking a course that Alex Blumberg did. Alex Blumberg is the founder of Gimlet Media and he used to be on This American Life years ago. He’s a well-known podcaster and it was podcasting storytelling because that’s the part of podcasting that is the most interesting to me is how do we get better at that?

Part of it was, how do we interview better? How do you take the raw footage and turn it into a story? It did have some behind-the-scenes thing. I just wanted to quickly share that I recommend the course if you’re interested in podcasting but I also recommend his formula for really anything that you might choose to embark on that should hold people’s attention.

He would say, “I’m telling a story about, fill in the blank. The story’s interesting because, fill in the blank.” It was fascinating and that’s the entire course, Barbi. You’ve now taken the course, you can have your certificate. If you think about how many times when we don’t do that as educators, we might do the first thing.

I’m telling a story about whatever in my discipline but we don’t do the and it’s interesting because. You could literally everything that we do as educators, that whole interesting piece because then we have to get good at understanding other people’s context, understanding their needs, understanding how people learn.

There are so many places we could go with that and I’ve just thought about it so many times. Whether it’s prepping for episodes, whether it’s trying to create effective learning experiences of my own is I’m telling a story about, fill in the blank. It’s interesting because, fill in the blank.

[00:40:12] Barbi: I just want to follow up and just say that if you can become a student of the format of podcasts that you listen to, that can be amazing. I’ve listened to podcasts where I’m like, “Nope.” I check out in 30 seconds, just did not connect with me and other podcasts, I’ll hang right in there for a full hour more.

I started to really look at the structure, like you said, how did they start it? How did they open? Do they open a curiosity loop and then close it at the end like, “What’s going on there”? Is it casual? Is it more formal? What is going on, what is happening in that space that keeps me engaged as a listener?

There’s the content, of course, there’s also, as you said, the structure of the process like, what’s going on there? I remember when I was taking the course on how to create a podcast, the person that I was taking the course through said that one of the best questions you can ask a guest is, tell me about a time when.

As soon as you do that, it switches the mode from, “I’m just going to tell you things,” to, “Oh, well, now I’m going to tell you about an experience I had or a story.” It’s so much more engaging and it really pulls from them what you’re looking for in an audio format, rather than just, “Okay, we’re here’s 10 things.” Another tip out there for those who are thinking about maybe creating a podcast as part of your course, that’s a good question to ask.

[00:41:25] Bonni: Oh, I love that. That applies so many spaces. That’s such a great, I thought you were going to say, because one question I love is, what’s something you’ve changed your mind about recently? That’s another one.

[00:41:37] Barbi: That’s a good one.

[00:41:38] Bonni: So many good things out of that. Barbi, what do you have to recommend for us today?

[00:41:42] Barbi: I have two things. The first one is just quick when you were mentioning taking clips of podcasts and putting them on wherever you want to post them on social media. The one that I use is called Headliner. Headliner is free and I can grab anywhere from 15 seconds to 10 minutes of a podcast. It creates a file for me that shows the waveform.

It’ll also add the transcript, it’ll add the title of the podcast. I can put video with it, whatever I want to do, and then upload it to social media and share. That’s a great way to grab a quick clip and give a little teaser if you will, or grab a sound bite for an episode. It’s called Headliner.

The other one I’ll recommend is just where I am right now, which is I stumbled on the book by James Clear called Atomic Habits. I may be late getting to this and it may have been recommended by a listener in the past, but I have just found this book this summer, as I’ve embarked on reorganizing my house, it’s just been chaos managing all the toys and all the things.

Then we’ve been all working from home for the past year and I’m like, “I’ve got to get control of my space.” I stumbled on this book and I’ve probably listened to more podcast episodes with James Clear than I have reading his entire book, but he had the whole idea, that the biggest takeaway I’ll share with listeners is, the idea is Atomic Habits, which just means how can you get yourself to get in the habit of doing the things that moves you towards the goals you want to achieve rather than the things that moves you away from them.

If you want to work out every day, what are the small things you can do and surround yourself with to make sure that you’re successful in doing that habit every day? Like putting your shoes by the door or getting your water bottle filled the night before or whatever that is, laying out your workout clothes the night before. Whatever it is that makes it easy.

One of the biggest takeaways he said for me that’s really connected with me as I’m redesigning and reorganizing my house is he said, “To become an architect of your environment.” Instead of letting things get dictated for you in terms of how your house should be laid out, or your living room is organized or whatever, to really look at how you live in that space and how you want to live in that space and then design it so that it makes it easy for you to do the things you want to do.

The best example that I can give is like, I’m trying to make homeschooling more of a daily integrated experience for my son because we’re not sending him to school right now with the pandemic. I have literally rearranged my entire living room to bring all of his books in, to bring all of the math manipulatives in.

I’ve combined it with his toys, so instead of it being in a separate place where we do school somewhere else in the house, everything is integrated and designed for this purpose. We can do it at any moment of day. Everything’s designed around this habit of doing a little bit of school each day, but it doesn’t have to be so formal.

There’re so many other ways that you can do this, but I just think that for those who are really looking for a way to get control of chaos in your life and start new, productive, positive habits that taking a look at some of James Clear’s work might be helpful.

[00:44:53] Bonni: Oh, I should totally go back and revisit my notes from the book. I really enjoyed reading it. I didn’t put it together as much with my recent. I went a little nutty on reorganizing here, so I’m happy to connect with you on that topic and know that you’re interested in that, Barbi.

Now, I’m thinking, “Oh, I should really kind of revisit the new ways I reorganized some of this stuff with habits in mind. I think I probably would discover some even better systems. Anytime you involve other people, when it’s like– my husband took the kids and they went to Yellowstone a while back. I just had fun by myself organizing, but see, when they get back, they don’t get into the systems, but I hadn’t really thought to put the habits lens on it.

Thank you for that advice and it’s a great book. I think people should pick it up. I’m going to check out Headliner too, that looks great. Well, Barbi, it’s so nice to get to have a conversation where I ask you a question, and then you say something back as opposed to we’re interacting on Twitter pretty regularly and then listening to your wonderful podcast as well. It’s just been such a delight.

[00:45:59] Barbi: It has been. Thank you so much for just the time and the space to connect with you and share ideas. I actually wrote down quite a few notes. Thank you for this opportunity to learn something new and just to be able to connect with your audience and to just be able to share the work that we do with teaching and learning and supporting our educators in making great learning spaces for students.

[00:46:21] Bonni: If anyone listening is on Twitter and wants to let Barbi and I know what you maybe took away some of your notes, I know that I did enjoy it, and I’m sure Barbi would too, to just to hear it from you there. Barbi’s Twitter account handle will be on the links in the show notes as well, so you can just click over and visit her on Twitter and have that conversation because she’s very active there.

[music]

Thank you to Dr. Barbi Honeycutt for joining me for today’s episode of Teaching in Higher Ed. If you’d like to visit the show notes, there are quite a lot of resources in this one, head on over to teachinginhighered.com/381, or get them in your inbox. In fact, not just today’s episode, but the most recent episodes, show notes, along with some other goodies that I don’t include anywhere else.

You can subscribe to my weekly update at teachinginhighered.com/subscribe. I’d love to have you engaging with me in that way and getting those extra recommendations again, that don’t show up in any of the episodes. Thanks so much for being a part of the Teaching in Higher Ed community, and I’ll see you next time.

[music]

[00:47:46] [END OF AUDIO]

The transcript of this episode has been made possible through a financial contribution by the Association of College and University Educators (ACUE). ACUE is on a mission to ensure student success through quality instruction. In partnership with institutions of higher education nationwide, ACUE supports and credentials faculty members in the use of evidence-based teaching practices that drive student engagement, retention, and learning.  

Teaching in Higher Ed transcripts are created using a combination of an automated transcription service and human beings. This text likely will not represent the precise, word-for-word conversation that was had. The accuracy of the transcripts will vary. The authoritative record of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcasts is contained in the audio file