Podcast creation as transformative music engagement

Abstract

This article reports a qualitative study that examined students' experiences of creating podcasts within an undergraduate music education course. Future music educators used digital media technology to assemble and share reflections on significant interactions with music throughout their lives, combining spoken narrative and musical excerpts to create audio podcasts. Nine participants were interviewed about their experiences of podcast creation. O'Neill's theory of transformative music engagement illuminates the data. Significant findings include the potential of podcast creation to enable learners to: reconnect through personal stories and music with experiences that can inform personally meaningful knowledge construction; exercise creativity and self-expression through building and sharing unique representations of learning and of selves; connect to others and collaboratively develop knowledge; combine text and music to find and communicate meaning within the disparate elements; and expand mental capacity through thinking aloud and repeatedly listening to their own words.

Keywords:

• podcast
• music education
• technology
• transformative music engagement
• creativity
• Web 2.0, twenty-first-century learning

Funding

This work was supported by a University of Victoria Teaching and Learning Grant.

Notes on contributors

Dr Benjamin Bolden, music educator and composer, is an associate professor in the Faculty of Education at Queen's University. His research interests include the learning and teaching of composing, community music, arts-based research, creativity and Web 2.0 technologies in education. As a teacher, Ben has worked with pre-school, elementary, secondary and university students in Canada, UK and Taiwan. An associate composer of the Canadian Music Centre, Ben's compositions have been performed by a variety of professional and amateur performing ensembles. Ben was editor of the Canadian Music Educator, official journal of the Canadian Music Educators' Association/L'Association canadienne des musiciens éducateurs from 2007 to 2014.

Dr James Nahachewsky is an Assistant Professor in Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Victoria. He teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in secondary language and literacy, multiliteracies across the curriculum, and curriculum theory. His research interests on the impact of changing texts and communication technologies, such as e-readers and iPads, on pedagogy and learning emerges from his years as a middle years and secondary classroom language and literacy teacher in Saskatchewan.

Additional information

Funding

Funding: This work was supported by a University of Victoria Teaching and Learning Grant.