The medium of podcasting for entertainment purposes has rapidly become a major part of media consumption for many in their daily lives. It makes perfect sense that podcasting has made the jump to the classroom giving both instructors and students a new format to share information, express individual creativity, and, of course, to tackle concepts in an engaging way. Members of the USU English Department faculty have found unique opportunities to include podcasting as a part of their course curriculum.

Senior Lecturer Russ Beck teaches creative nonfiction writing and finds the practice of podcasting adds an innovative dimension to the course. “I teach creative nonfiction and I think it would be wrong to say that the future of the genre is podcasting: the present of the genre is podcasting—and has been for probably around a decade. This goes from the very informative, to the journalistic, to the very arty. Podcasting is just as welcoming as nonfiction itself and I can't see another way to teach the genre.” Russ adds that the combination of spoken word and writing allows students the opportunity to think about their work in a different context. “Students have to focus on the writing in a new way because it's not just what's on the page, but how it sounds and what you can capture on tape,” he notes.

Assistant Professor Jessica Rivera-Mueller has also incorporated podcasting for her students. “I wanted to provide a real audience for students in my ‘Teaching Young Adult Literature’ course,” she says. “In the course, students study how and why to select texts for students, and I wanted to offer my students (future teachers) an opportunity to practice talking with real students about YA lit. So, I coordinated with my colleagues in the Utah Council of Teachers of English to arrange a way for my students to share their book talk podcasts with teachers who could share them with their middle and high school students.” Jessica also believes that podcasting offers students a chance to enhance the communication skills that will be essential in taking their next steps in their careers as educators. She reflects, “Future teachers need to learn how to talk with other educators, but they also need to know how to share their expertise in student-friendly ways. For me, this project highlights the important communication work K-12 teachers engage in to work with multiple stakeholders in education.”

Speeches and presentations in front of classrooms can be an anxiety-producing task for some students. Lecturer Ashley Wells has made use of the podcasting format in her English 2010 courses to make oral communication more interesting and accessible for her students, allowing students to explore the possibilities of persuasive dialogue through podcasts based around essays crafted during the semester. “I’ve taught podcasting for years in a range of courses because they are adaptable, thought-provoking, and fun. In my 2010 courses, students have a wide range of rhetorical techniques to draw from as they stake a persuasive claim,” she says. “It also helps us to think about audience and credibility in keen ways. Students have the opportunity to include an interview, so they must think carefully about reliability. In fact, I was floored when one student actually reached out to a writer for The Atlantic who they cited in their essay. The writer agreed to an interview. While I don’t ask my students to do this, it was an amazing conversation that really demonstrated above and beyond thinking about credible sources."