Radio Segment Assignment (25% of Grade)

podcastDesigning this course reaffirmed my belief that one of the central thing that makes studying education so interesting is that it is constantly being “remade.” Because higher education is constantly in the process of being reinvented, it means that the conflicts and tensions among various individuals and groups with different visions for higher education are playing out around us all of the time.

For example, at Bucknell, faculty members have been engaged in multiple conversations about issues such as grade inflation, student engagement, and the quality of student life on campus. The material you have been learning about in this course can and should link up directly with some of your experiences as a new college student. If you are observant, this course can help you to make better sense of Bucknell and your place in it.

If you are observant, this course will help you to link what you see around you with the issues we discuss each week…

 

To facilitate meaningful linkages between the course content and what is happening around us, I’ve designed a podcast assignment. Maybe some of you have experience creating podcasts or working in radio. If so, this is fantastic, and we will strive to take advantage of your expertise. If not, it is OK, I’ve built the course around the assumption that we are all novices when it comes to producing high quality radio segments.

Podcasting Promotes Learning

Learning to create a podcast is an opportunity for you to reach beyond typical college writing assignments to address a broader audience. In today’s tech driven society, it is important to be able to be a critical consumer of media and one of the best ways to develop your skills in this area is to gain experience as a media producer. I like this assignment because it encourages your creativity, your ability to work together in groups, and helps you to understand the significant effort that must be invested when one wants to communicate ideas clearly. By becoming podcast authors, my hope is that you will come to see podcasts as a unique and compelling form of communication, and see yourself as a producers of media as well as a consumers.

Over the course of the semester, with the help of the Library & Instruction Technology staff, we will gain some radio production skills that we can put to work in making sense of the course content. More specifically, working as groups of 3-5 students, you will become a production team responsible for the creation of a captivating 6-7 minute podcast focused on an issue related to higher education in the U.S. The goal is to produce, as closely as possible, the kind of high quality radio you might hear on This American Life, The Moth, Snap Judgment,  Serial, or other good radio shows.

     snap_judgement_sq     42_01_ARTS_COURTESY_MOTHSerial logo

(Click the images above to go to the respective websites to hear some examples of high quality radio journalism. Also, check out Youth Radio (https://youthradio.org/classroom/desk/student-content in Oakland, CA. )

This assignment will require a lot  of work, but I have tried to break this up into digestible chunks that will be due at various times throughout the semester. If our radio segments are good enough, there is a good chance we can have them broadcast on WVBU.

Descriptions of the various stages of the project can be found at the following links:

Radio Part 1

Radio Part 2

Radio Part 3

Radio Part 4

Radio Part 5

Radio Part 6

Radio Part 7

Radio Part 8

The following summary sheet will be used to keep track of your progress on various elements of the project:

[gdoc link=”https://docs.google.com/document/d/1QZiBXOs_fwidMs_CFlc6c-68dDaf76XoMYp3hiL23IQ/pub” width=”1200″ height=”800″]