If you clicked onto my post, you’re one of many who contemplated reading something due to its length. We’ve all been there. There’s a new newsletter that came into your mailbox about company news or that interesting research you’ve been dying to read but you can’t seem to get past the abstract.
What if I told you there’s another way to avoid this? The answer to your woes are podcasts.
There have been companies and organizations that use podcasts to help share new research and conversations around their companies. According to the IT teaching resource from Stanford Graduate School of Education, this is a good way to disseminate information in an approachable way.
This is a rather creative endeavor as written correspondence can’t fully capture the voice of the person featured in the newsletter or the passion that a researcher has for their project. Print media can fall flat especially when the writer cannot put these aspects into prose. There’s something about hearing two people converse about a topic that makes it more relatable.
A personal example is whenever I read a company wide newsletter featuring different employee stories, I read it with my own voice. It falls flat as there are a few quotes from the person being interviewed and it’s apparent that another person wrote it due to the third person perspective for much of the writing.
When dealing with reading research, it feels unreachable in writing for some people as it can take a long time to read or it may intimidate people because of the style of writing. I am the type of person who likes hearing stories and how everything relates to the world around us. For one of my posts weekly posts for ETEC 500 about action research, I chose to feature one podcast about how an action researcher has used and interacted with this kind of research in the field. For me, this was memorable because the interviewee had the chance to elaborate and interact with the interviewer’s thoughts and questions about the work they do.
Of course with any medium, there are some disadvantages to it. According to the IT teaching resource from Stanford Graduate School of Education, the major disadvantage for podcasts are the lack of visual and textual support. This is sometimes problematic when communicating highly technical and visual subjects liek architecture or art.
Do you think quick podcasts are a good alternative to company wide newsletters or disseminating advances in research within organizations?
Source: https://teachingresources.stanford.edu/resources/how-to-leverage-podcasts-for-learning/
Hi Bianca,
I’m a big fan of podcasts and definitely think there is a space for them in education and everyday life. Similar to podcasts, I often have course materials read to me by text-to-speech software as I’m reading, or if I’m unable to sit down and follow along if I’m doing housework and I’ll just listen to the text-to-speech. It helps me stay engaged longer and retain more (especially if I’m listening and reading at the same time).
However, there are definitely some downfalls versus paper/text and video. I find it much harder to find specific points within a podcast like a chapter in a video or heading in an article. Usually, there’s only the option skip 15 seconds ahead or behind, and have to click this multiple times. Have you had challenges like this as well in the past?
Hi John!
Yes, text-to-speech is another great tool for studying. I actually came across this tip during my first MET course. A few of my classmates were discussing some tricks to get through reading. I think with all of this discussion people are slowly realizing how they learn best. With tech advancement, it gives us so much choice and freedom on how we consume content.
In terms of difficulties, I’ve also encountered problems trying to find specific points within a podcast. When rewinding, I have to listen and think if that point is where I can find the info I’m looking for. I also sometimes lose my way when I get distracted. Although, with better produced podcasts, they provide transcripts and time stamps in order to help listeners find their way.
Hi Bianca. When I saw your title, I thought I should reply. In this era surrounded by fragmented information, for me personally, only content that is clearly of interest to me will immediately attract me to read it if it is long. If it is important, must-read or academic material, many times I will need to give myself some mental construction before I can finish browsing it carefully. I tried to listen to some informative podcasts while doing simple things like walking the dog or doing housework. The idea is to use piecemeal time to enrich my knowledge base, and it works. But judging from my personal learning effect, podcasts are more suitable for disseminating news and knowledge that does not require much research. Maybe it’s because my basic academic learning revolves around reading and I need to use my eyes as well as notes to enhance my learning? In my personal opinion, this is undoubtedly a good choice for modern learning, but it may be optimized by considering the fields and audiences for which it is more suitable.
Hello!
You offered a great response. With fragmented information, it is of value to do some extra reading and even find the source information to get a full or better of picture of what you’re reading. In your response, you also mentioned mental construction. I wonder what kind of mental construction you use. Do you organize information in bite size pieces or do you summarize what you’ve read? I think this is important as reading is also a skill. Without proper skills, it poses great difficulty to make sense of what we’ve read. I suppose this is part of the reason why some people dislike reading. They might lack the basic skills to do so.
Podcasts do have a reputation for disseminating knowledge to the broader public. Optimization of podcasts to certain fields and audiences is possible, but I wonder what future strategies they would employ. One specific example that came to my mind is the action research podcast that I mentioned in my original post. For terms where the listener might not be aware of, there would be a bell that would ring and the host would stop and offer a definition and continue with the interview.
Hi Bianca, you know my answer, I don’t want to read it if it is long haha! I also read in my own voice, and I find academic writing difficult to read sometimes. I sure agree that listening to a story or conversation is much easier in many ways, similarly, I also prefer audio books over reading texts. And with a mobile device, podcasts are so easy to access and convenient to bring with us. Thank you for sharing your post!
Hi Jennie,
You bet! Convenience is so important nowadays. Would you say that you’re an auditory learner?
For audiobooks, I can see why you like them over reading texts. The voiceovers are great for dialogue within novels. I find that it brings the text to life – especially when they can do the accents well.