ABOUT THIS EPISODE
Episode · 9 months ago
SHARE THIS EPISODE
Episode · 9 months ago
Faculty Podcasts as Program Promotion
ABOUT THIS EPISODE
I was confronting this western of howto make my worse more personalized than to create some semblance of human humanattraction, especially in a course that was entirely a synchronius you're listening to enrolment growth,university from helics education, the best professional development podcastfor higher education leaders looking to grow in Roman at their college oruniversity, whether you're looking for fresh and Roman growth techniques andstrategies or tools and resources. You've come to the right place. Let'sget into the show, welcome back to enromant growthuniversity, a proud member of the connect Edu podcast network, I'm EricWolson with helics education and we're here today with Dr David Pena, GuzmanAssistant, professor in the School of Humanities and Liberal Studies at SanFrancisco State University and Dr Elli Anderson Assistant, professor, in theDepartment of Philosophy at Pmono University Ellie, welcome to the showand David Welcome back. Thank you thanks, TAT, four having US yeah, I'mglad to be back so excited to have you back in to meet Alli Soaks at hed totalk with you both today about creating academic podcasts for both curriculum,and course promotion before we dig in. Can you provide the listeners with abrief intro on yourself, starting with Ellie sure so yeah, I'm Ellie Anderson?I started to Drop Mono College. This fall as Assystant, professor and priorto that I was visiting assystamt professor at Pitzer College. For a fewyears I specialize in Twentye century continental philosophy, includingdeconstruction, phenomenology and existentialism, and I also work onfeminist pilosophy and David Benya Wusman, and I am an assistant professorin the School of Humanities and Liberal Studies. Aft San Francisco StateUniversity. I teach a number of courses primarily in the history of science.The philosophy of science and contemporary humanities and, like Lei,have a background in European philosophy, which we both share onaccount of having been graduate student buddies back when we went to emery inAtlanta, Georgia, Awesome Awesome D and obviously I could not be more excitedabout this topic. Personally, I think we've chosen the perfect venue and formto have this conversation to give us some background David during covid. Ithink we've all seen a greater need to personalize and humanize our courseswhen we can't all be together in order to best engage our students talk aboutone of the solutions you found this year in Mani, podcasts yeah. So I thinkabout a month into the falle semester. I was confronting this question of howto make my corse more personalized than to create some semblance of human humanintraction, especially in a course that was entirely a synchronius, meaningthat at no point that the whole class come together to meet. Let's say on azoom meeting and one of the solutions...
...that I found was to stop relying ontext communication and move over to mini podcasting, which is I I think,it's a term that I've invented. I don't think I don't think it's in Collmon USAT yet,but so, for example, in terms of communicating with the class instead ofsending them along email with bullet points. I would record myself talkingto my phone and send them, let's say a five seven minute recording giving themall the information they needed for a particular week, and the feedback thatI got from my students is that they really liked it, and so I started doinglectures in the form of many podcasts. I started doing really most of theteacher student communication in this form and the feadback was so positivethat I decided that I will continue to do that, even in the future, when we'reno longer teaching under conditions of distance learning to really creativeidea. Ind a super helpful background. As we talk about utilizing podcast tocreate more personalized communications and more with that Ali, can you give usa high level ofverview of your new podcast overthink, and why covidspecifically may be the perfect time for students to wrestle with theseideas that you wrestle with in the show yeah. So overthink is a podcast whereDavid and I have a conversation about a given topic and draw on text and ideasfrom the history of philosophy. So, for instance, our episode on existentialanxiety touches on Kurkegard and Sart and Bavoar and a number of other ideas.So we have some episodes that are pretty conceptually driven, such asthat one, and then we have others that are more driven by current events, suchas antimasking movements during Covid, and for that you'll hear us talkingabout the contrast between concept of freedom that we find in down lock andone that we find in Hagel and so in gentlemen. We're looking to synthesizediscussions of current events and pop culture with philosophical approach.That draws on the history of philosophy- and I think here you know one thingthat really interested David and me was the fact that at this time a lot ofpeople are listening to podcast in different ways, and so not juststudents, all those students as well. But I think you know a lot of folks nolonger have the kind of commute that they usually would have had, where theymight listen to a podcast but they're taking walks in their neighborhood veryfrequently. I think for students it's so important to get outside and whetheryou're listening to a short mini podcast like the one that David talkedabout doing for his classes or just finding a way to try and think aboutsome of the concepts you may have learned about in a class outside of theclassroom, while you're on your neighborhood walk, a podcast is areally great opportunity to do that. Our episodes are about forty five tofifty five minutes long and so they're...
...a little bit on the longer side. Youknow for an educational podcast, but I think they really sit squarely in thekind of range. This are time range that you would find for a mainstream podcast,and that was very much of interest to us. So content wise, huge, huge overlapwith what you both teach. Let's dig into your show goals here, David. Areyou hoping to send existing students to the show, as part of your coursecurriculum? Are you hoping that the show might recruit listeners as brandnew students into your departments? What are your? What are your he highlevel goals here? I think both of those are right, so, on the one hand, we wantto give our current students the link for the podcast and let them know hey,even if you're going to go out in the world after the end of the semester,even after you graduate. Hopefully this will be a tool that will help. Youstill be a part in some way of the kinds of conversations that we werealready fostering in class. So discussions about theoretical concepts,about philosophical problems and trying to put those in dialogue, whether thatbe with current events or with contemporary culture, and so one goalthat I think Eliand I share certainly is to share this podcast with ourstudents so that they can see the kind of application that we make of thephilosophical content that we read in class. So once you step outside of theclassroom, what are some of the things that you can do with the tools thatyou've acquired? But I think, especially in my case, I am interestedin the second part of the question, which is bringing new students to myclasses. And so I do think of this. Podcast as something that canpotentially make students who may otherwise not think about taking thekinds of courses that I teach it might make them interested in potentiallyenrolling in one of my courses, whether that be a course that I teach on Frenchphilosophy or a course that I teach on the history and philosophy of scienceor a quarters that I teach on mine, brain and culture, because a lot ofthose interests that drive my teaching and that drive. My research arecertainly reflected in our conversations in overthink. So I wouldsay that those two things are equally important goals to work with currentstudents and make the podcast available to them and also to bring ine studentsinto the classroom. VSV, the podcast yea, the enrolment goals are superinteresting and I'm assuming you're going to see some interest from yourown institutions or excitement about this show. As you can grow itslistenership organically Inthrouh, your classes. Is there some kind ofinstitutional support that you're hoping for in the future, whether it befrom an equipment standpoint or a budget standpoint, or just from abroader institutional support. From a...
...promotion standpoint, are you hopingthat they see this show as a brand builder for them? Well, I think thatthere are good recess to think of this podcast us a brand builder if we wantto use this term both for SFSU and for Pomona, in so far as it puts thepotlight on two young upand coming professors who are trying to Bridch this g cort trying to brichtheir research, their teaching and their service, because when you thinkabout something like a podcast and for people who don't know that, behind thescenes operations of academia, most professors are typically evaluated onthree tategories were evaluated on our teaching. That's one! Third, apart jobwe're evaluated on our research, which is another third and finally ownedservice, and this podcast, I think, connects those three in a veryinteresting way, and so that's one reason why. I hope that ourinstitutions take an interest in the podcast and provide some form ofsupport down the road. We are certainly very new. We have just launched acouple of weeks ago, three o four weeks ago, and we haven't yet gotten to the pointwhere we have made any formal requests for institutional support. Andhopefully, when that happens, the universities will be receptive, seeingthe possible impact that something like podcasting can have on enrollment, butalso just a a student engagement more generally, especially when we thinkabout the fact that this podcast puts our institutions also on the map, inthe sense that a lot of people who are not either at Pomona or at Sfsu or evenin California, at all, will be listening to faculty members from theseinstitutions yeah and we were originally going to record actually atPamona. The CLARMONT colleges of which pomona is a part, has a reallyexcellent recording studio called the hige. That's a sort of not only arecording studio but also place for creative collaboration, and we wereplanning to use their space, including their fancy, microphones and because ofcovid as been unable to do thut. And so I think definitely there's a hope thatones campus real and you know David- can come down to southern Californiaand spend some time recording in the studio there or we have gotten support,though from Pomona in the form of a research assistant, who's, helping uswith the podcast production, and so I was actually able to reallocate some ofmy startup funds, which were originally intended for conference travel to astudent production assistant because, obviously conference travel is nothappening right now, and so we hade a little bit of leftover money there. Sothat's been really. Nice also want to do quickly circle back to Eri yourprevious question about the show goals, because I know if I sort of dropped theball there, when you paused to see if I...
...wanted to add anything. So I might saya quick thing about that. Now sure, please yeah, I mean because I work at asmall liberal Arts College, it's a very tight knit community, and so it'sreally common for students to recommend professors to each other, and I thinkthat's that word of mouth is the primary thing that bring students toclasses even more than Oh. I want to major in such and such a discipline.It's actually the reputation of professors. That is often the drivingfactor at a small liberal arts, college and enrollment, and so I think, from myperspective, especially as a new faculty member podcasting, is a reallyexciting way for a student to be able to tell another friend hey. You shouldtake a class in the philosophy department, with Professor Anderson andnot just have their you know not just have the student take their word for it,but also be able to say listen to this podcast episode and see what you thinkand, more broadly speaking, even aside from reputation as a single professorDavid, and I have so much confidence in the discipline of philosophy and in thehumanities as a whole, and so I think, to be able to show that we're doingexciting things that go beyond the bounds of the university. Hopefullyeven within the university, can be exciting for students and draw them toour classes. Yeah, and I think I can add to this- the kind of dynamic thatyou see on air between ell and I is reflective of the kind of energy andpersonality that we bring individually to the classroom as well. So, at leastfor me, I don't see a big difference between my personality in the podcastand my personality in front of the classroom. So, in terms of thinkingabout the image that students get of me in this project, I see it as continuouswith my personality as a professor, and so I do want students to talk about thepodcast, because what they get inthe podcast is what they get in a slightlydifferent form in the classroom. Let's take into that for a second that ideaof a different form when you're thinking about content. When you'rethinking about classroom content versus podcast content, are you trying to bemore inclusive? Are you trying to be? You know more aligned with theculturals that guys to draw students in? Do you think of it? Pedagogicallydifferent? You know your podcast audience versus versus your yourtraditional Corse Students Hm, I would say, for my perspective, I definitelythink of them as different, because a lot of the classes that I teach aresurvey courses in a particular school of philosophy or a particular period.So, for instance, continental thought is in nineteenth and twentieth centurycontinentall, European Philosophy survey course a student coming intothat course is going to expect to be reading people cagl and Nicha andphenon, and so they're sort of led by an interest in the topics and the textin a way that I don't expect from a podcast listener. I expect a podcastlistener to be more driven by the topics and the text. Thinkers andtheories are coming second, and so I...
...would say in both my Pedagogi and inthe podcast, there's an interweaving of those different elements, but Idefinitely frontload the topics more in the podcast than I would in a classroomsetting yeah, and I think to that I can a site from what gets put in theforeground and Hane gets put in the background. There is also at least inmy case, a difference just at the level of content, because, although I am ahphilosopher, I am trained as a professional philosopher like Elli andthat's, as I said, something that we share in common. I was hired at SanFrancisco State University to teach primarily the history of science andthat', simply not the theme of the podcast, and so that sometimes comes in,and I will inject little insights here and there from my research and myteaching about the history of physics or the history of biology or thehistory of neuroscience. But there is a limit to how much I will do that,because I do think of our podcast audience as having a less as being moreinterested in the theory, the philosophy, the culture more so thannecessarily and whatever scientific interests I might have- and you knowsometimes also when you teach a claus, you really fore students to deal with aspecific text for a long time to do close readings, sometimes readings thatare quite demanding and quite rigorous, and one of the things that we wantedfrom the very beginning was to avoid having a podcast that was tooprofessorial. There are plenty of podcasts out there that are highlyeducational and that have much more of a lecture format. Wor One person youknow talks for forty minutes about a subject in great detail and that'sgreat, that's that has a lot of petoglogical value, but we wanted amuch more conversational approach that is lighter, more dynamic, a little bitmore organic and that's honestly, just a little bit more fun. That was an important moom. Sto havesomething that anybody could relate to, even if they are not, let's say agraduate student in the humanities like the ones that I teach yeah. I think there's less buyininitially for a podcast listener. In terms of the actual theories involved,then I'm able to expect an a small Obra Arts college where you know, in my casestudents don't have a lot of requirements, and so they're usuallycoming to my classroom out of a sher interest in the topic. If they do havea requirement, it's requirement for their philosophy, degree and so they'realready interested in philosophy and with podcast listeners. You know it's atotally different context. There Ealy for those faculty listening thinkingboy, maybe I should start a podcast and want to learn off your curve and thethought that's gone into it that you've expressed today any any next tepsadvice for them, starting out where...
...should they start first, I would startoff with great cohost. Like David, I mean, I think, one of the biggestthings that David and I have had to realize is that in becoming podcasters,it's actually been not just about becoming voiceover actors, but it'salso been about becoming editors. So I think the biggest surprise for me ishow much editing I've had to learn. So I would start with the technology or APthat's going to enable your editing services, probably also microphones. Wehaven't gotten that far yet ing about a podcast. Is that there's areally low barrier to entry and there are a lot of really good, APPs anddistribution platforms that make that easy. But I think it's also require alot more time than David, and I realized for actually learning thatstuff and also for building or on air dynamic. I think we originally justthought. Oh, we have this great chemistry in real life that willautomatically translate over Intoa podcast and actually Botmon to reallyget solid on that yeah. No, that's right. I think there is a learningcurve, on the one hand, to the interpersonal dynamic on air. Ifsomebody wants to do a podcast with another person, but then there is againthe behind the scenes operations which, as Elli points out, we didn't expect sothe amount of time that it takes to really edit a podcast in order tocreate a polished, semisophisticated product, even while working withrelatively limited resources, as in our case right, we don't have a to hire an audio editor, for example,and so we're doing all that work ourselves, and so for somebody who isthinking mshould, I jump into this podcast business. I think the mostimportant question up front would be to be clear about what your goals are. Soif you want to create a brand, which is what Elli and I are trying to dosomething that requires. U Know a good amount of editing that requireis socialmedia pressens then be aware of the fact that it will require work. If whatyou want is something like my mini podcasts with my class, therequirements are, are significantly less demanding right. I would justrecord into my phone and then send whatever I recorded and the studentsliked it, but it was just a different kind of thing. So I think the mostimportant thing that those people who are on defense might want to get clearabout is exactly what their goals are, because one is a very EC low cost highvalue project, the other one is also a high valued project, but that requiresmuch more commitment. Mm Yeah definitely agree with that. Ily David.Thank you both so much for your time today. What's the best place forlisteners to connect with you if they have any follip questions and where canthey find the show beginning with Elli Yeah? Well, they canbin us just aboutanywhere. You find your podcast,...
...especially apple, podcast and spotifywere not Ungoogle, but I think you know besides that, were pretty broadlyavailable and feel free to email us at deer over think at gmailcom. We've alsogot a great instagram run by one of our students, and that is overthinkunderscore pod, and they can also always find our professional emailaddresses by googling our professional websites, so Eli Anderson Balsophy atBamona College and David Penyagusman, School of Humanities and LiberalStudies at San Francisco State University. Awesome Goe, subscribefolks and thank you both oow much for joining us today. Thank you, Ari greed,to talk to you. Thank you so much attracting today's new post,traditional learners, means adopting new enromant strategies. Keelicseducations data driven enterprise, wide approach to enrollment growth isuniquely helping colleges and universities thrive in this neweducation, landscape and Helex has just published the second edition of theirenrollment growth playbook, with fifty percent brand new content on howinstitutions can solve today's most pressing andromant growth challengesdownload it today for free at Heloks, Educationcom playbook you've been listening to enromantgrowth university from helicks education to ensure that you never missan episode subscribe to the show in Itunes or your favorite podcast player.Thank you so much for listening until next time.
In-Stream Audio Search
NEWSearch across all episodes within this podcast