Reflections on Podcasting and Pedagogic Scholarship as Early Career Academic, by Dr Natasha Baxter and Dr Sahana Shankar
Pedagogic scholarship focuses on disseminating pedagogic knowledge and practise and can be done via various means. For those of us on teaching focused career pathways pedagogic scholarship is one of the few requirements for promotions and career progression. As early career academics we wanted to engage with our scholarship in an innovating way, and in a way where we can share pedagogy and higher education with wider audiences. So, we created a podcast that focuses on discussing pedagogy and topics within higher education, such as the use of AI and ways to increase student engagement. The podcast is aimed at fellow early career academics, as well as wider audiences who may be unfamiliar with pedagogy.
Podcasting Perks
So far podcasting has been quite fun!
As early career academics it can often be overwhelming when trying to engage with pedagogic research and scholarship, as there is a lot out there however it can also be hard to find things that is applicable to the roles that we are currently in. For each episode we usually build upon our knowledge but also explore the topic by reading up on the literature on the specific pedagogic topic area in more depth. This really gives us a more structured approach to writing each episode and it gives us a good opportunity to understand these areas in more depth. With some of the episodes that we are currently planning we also able to explore new topic areas that we would otherwise not really engage with.
The best part of running a podcast is sharing our experiences and knowledge with others, in the hope that other ECRs will find our thoughts useful. We’ve had many fumbles and things go wrong and would have appreciated some advice when we started teaching.
We have been able to discuss the different experiences each of us have had over our academic careers. As we have worked at different universities, we have been able to give insights to each other into how different institutions work. It is quite fascinating learning about the different protocols, processes, practises, and policies programmes use. By discussing these differences between institutions, we have been able to learn about different pedagogic practises that we can incorporate into our own practise.
Podcasting has also given us an opportunity to reflect on our teaching practises over the past few years. Often as an educator it is just go, go, go as we are constantly trying to keep on track of the teaching, marking, research, admin etc. We do not always have the time to reflect on what is going well with our pedagogic practise or where we could improve. There are always more talks to give, conference to attend, assignments to mark, lectures to plan etc. So, taking time to reflect is quite rare. In doing to the podcast, we have been able to look back on our teaching, from when we first started to now, and identify where we have improved and gained more confidence, but also find areas that we could work on or gain more experience.
Podcasting Pitfalls
There are some negatives however, to our podcasting experience. Finding the audience can be tricky, as early career academics it can be difficult to pick whether staff or students are the target audience, for us we wanted to aim at fellow early career academics (others welcome!) so that we could share our experiences in the beginning of our academic journeys. Discussing topics that are important to higher education has helped achieve targeting our content to this audience, and discussing ‘hot topics’ such as AI has helped demonstrate the relevancy of our podcast, and hopefully early careers academics find our discussion informative but also interesting.
A downside, however, is that as early career academics, there are some topics that we don’t have a lot of experience in, and so when discussed, we cannot provide a lot of depth and personal experience. An example here would be policy/accreditation as these are areas that we have not yet gained experience as these roles these tend to be for more senior academics. While, we may not have lots of experience in some areas, I think as early career academics we can still discuss these topics, but our strongest episodes certainly lie where we can share personal anecdotes as these tend to be slightly more entertaining.
Another negative is just finding the time in our schedule to record the podcast! As early career academics, particularly in term time, often we are quite busy, and so far when it comes to recording the podcast, we have had to set aside an entire day to account for any technical issues with the recording equipment, and so we can record as many episodes as we can. While this has not necessarily been a negative experience, it does take time. Editing the podcast is also quite time-consuming, with our longer episodes taking nearly an hour to render or upload. Learning how to record and edit the podcast was certainly a challenge, as these were not skills we previously had experience in, but we think we have started to get the hang of it. So, the practical elements of starting a podcast are certainly challenging, especially as we have both audio and video versions.
Parting thoughts
Finding opportunities for pedagogic scholarship as early career researchers and educators can be hard, so creating opportunities for yourself can be one pathways forward amongst many. Running a podcast has definitely been an experience in gaining new skills quite rapidly in the little time that we do have, however the experience itself has been very rewarding.
We hope this blog has given some insight into pedagogic scholarship and encourages you to seek out different types of pedagogic resources.
And of course, we can’t write a blog about a podcast without also plugging our podcast. Check out the Art of Lecturing at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OaPKEYJ1leg&list=PLpjjGF8zCS6_M6nidwb1iaK3TiytIuDsZ&pp=iAQB
If you would like to have a chat about any of these topics do get in contact with us at natasha.baxter@rhul.ac.uk or sahana.shankar@rhul.ac.uk.