Listen to This: Incorporating Podcasts as Assigned “Reading” in Introduction to Sociology

• In Event: 3223 - Teaching and Learning Symposium: Lightning Presentations of Teaching Technique

Abstract

Following trends in the digitalization of information, many sociologists have turned to podcasts, among other media, to disseminate sociological insights. There’s no doubt that this moving of sociological content to the Internet has been useful for instruction. For instance, a brief search in the TRAILS database shows that podcasts are featured as course content in many recent publications (King 2017; Kordsmeier 2016; Lotspeich 2011; Ramirez 2013). In this presentation, I will discuss how I incorporated podcasts as assigned “reading” in Introduction to Sociology. I will share how I located appropriate podcasts like The Social Breakdown and Office Hours, how I selected podcasts for particular lectures, and how I incorporated the podcasts on the syllabus and my University’s online learning management system, Canvas. Further, following literature on reading compliance and assessment (Hatteberg and Steffy 2013), I share disparate experiences from two semesters of assigning podcasts – the first in which student listening was only assessed on exams and the next in which student listening was assessed before each class to which a podcast was assigned. In particular, during my second semester of assigning podcasts as “reading,” students were required to complete what I titled, “2-Minute Papers” before the start of class. The format of the 2-Minute Papers instructed students to write one to two sentences on each of the following points: a summary of the podcast, a finding / conclusion reached in the podcast, and a question the student was left with after listening to the podcast. Instructors interested in incorporating one – or many – podcasts in their courses as assigned “reading” should find this presentation useful.

Author

• Jamie L Oslawski-Lopez, Indiana University Kokomo