Student-led podcasting for engineering education

Abstract

The use of podcasts is challenging traditional communication methods in higher education, with the potential for creating engaging and flexible resources for learning and development. Likewise, podcasts are helping to facilitate a stronger student identity and community within learning environments, replacing traditional student newsletter and website approaches. In this work, an innovative podcasting approach is presented in which there is a strong student-centred and student-led premise to foster and advance engineering education-related uses. Podcasts are intended to cover a range of relevant engineering topics, such as sharing student views on global, institutional and scientific developments and disseminating information on unique educational opportunities. Details on the design, set-up and implementation of the initiative are presented (e.g. resource requirements, management and organisation structures, maintenance of balanced educational outcomes). An evaluation of the experiences of the team members is also presented, showing favourable outcomes in skills development, community identity and broader educational awareness.

Keywords:

• podcasting
• student-led projects

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to acknowledge the financial support for this work through an Imperial College Teaching Development Grant. The authors would also like to thank Gareth Mitchell for his help and advice on the set-up of the group, Lauren Noto for her administrative and website development help and, of course, the student team from whom we've learnt so much, namely: Kamil Bayri, Cheng Chen, Erfang (Sunny) Chen, Shiang Chin, Dinesh Durai Ratnam, Nicholas Heung, Hassan Joudi, Kang Hao (Gillet) Li, Nida Mahmud, Majiroghene Otobo, Thusithan Puvaneswaran, Marc Schaepertoens, Jeremiah To, Wee Wong.