Political Science Educator: volume 27, issue 1
Assignments and Course Design
Louise Pears, Leeds University, Marine Gueguin, Leeds University, and Harry Swinhoe, Leeds University
The public increasingly relies on podcasts to know important things about the world. Edison (2023) suggests that 62% of Americans have listened to a podcast, with regular listening habits higher amongst younger Americans. Increasingly podcasts are being used to disseminate research findings and engage audiences both within and outside of academia. At the same time, podcasts and audio recordings are generating increasing impacts in higher education and are part of wider conversations about the role of digital technologies in learning. McGarr (2010) identifies three ways in which podcasting is used in relation to lectures- substitutional (where lecture content is recorded), supplementary (where recorded information is put out in addition to a lecture) and creative use (where students are involved in the production of podcasts). Faculty have effectively used podcasts in politics and international studies classrooms in each of these ways in the past.[1] In this essay, we reflect on using a lecture to record a “live episode” of a podcast and recommend the format as a way to empower students as emerging political scholars, flip the classroom, and enliven the delivery.
In this project, we used the final lecture of our Security Studies course to record a live podcast with a panel of scholars answered questions from the students. Questions came in advance and real-time through Padlet, as well as from students in the room during the session. We then edited and published this as an episode of the podcast “Insecure: a security podcast” (a podcast series hosted by the Centre for Global Security Challenges).
Often the incorporation of podcasts into classes means asking students to produce a podcast. While this has real advantages (such as upskilling students in media creation), we didn’t do this because the teaching (and where assessed grading) of the technical aspects of podcast creation would have to come at the expense of the course content (in a university where essay assignments are still the norm). Furthermore, where students produce the podcast on a large core module such as this it would result in the production of a high number of podcasts that might struggle to achieve a large listenership. Instead, the output in this case is the co- creation of an episode of a pre-existing podcast of international standing. This podcast lecture exercise is authentic in that it asks students to reflect on the skills and knowledge that we want them to obtain from the course whilst contributing to a scholarly output in the field of security studies.
And its final advantage is that podcasts can be engaging, or as a student said:
“I love listening to podcasts, it is how I get most of my information.”
Or after the session:
“It was great to do something that was interactive.”
The entire module is already centered around security questions, rather than a more traditional school or security event weekly structure. Inspired by Holland and Lister (2014) and a wider feminist curiosity (Enloe 2004), the use of this question format helps students to realize that the discipline is not “settled” but that key ideas are fluid and reactive to the ever-fluctuating security landscape. The aim is to get students to always consider what is at stake in security theory and practice. The final lecture has always been about the “future of security studies”. By turning to the students to ask questions for this lecture, we encourage critical thinking and engagement with the course content, and center them in the pedagogical practice of the discipline. This was clear during the course of the session with the panel critically reflecting on their own limitations, particularly with regard to engaging with the changing social media landscape and its relationship with Security Studies and the ways in which a younger generation of students could contribute to scholarship and understanding in this area.
In informal feedback after the session one student said:
“it was good to have questions that we put forward to be answered and we felt the next generation of security scholars.”
And another:
“Brought the whole module together and also felt good to be able to engage in those conversations due to the foundation of knowledge that has been built over the module.”
We received an interesting selection of questions both in advance and during the session, which demonstrated very in-depth understanding of the module from students. The conversation on the day went well, in part because we had the existing podcast format to use as well as due to the generosity of colleagues who offered their time. We also thought about the composition of the panel to bring in a range of career stages, an even gender bias, and some spread in research expertise and geographic specialisms.
The first area to improve is the logistics and technology. Leeds University has a new Makerspace in the library that rents podcast microphones and provides some technical support. This was great and ensured a reasonable audio quality, but we faced some technical and other issues. We lacked a microphone per speaker. Wire lengths meant some microphone juggling. Timetabling issues meant an awkward room layout. Small issues but worth having these more logistical elements worked out more smoothly.
Also, engagement was patchy. The students who submitted questions and attended the lecture seemed very engaged and informal feedback was good, but many students did not submit questions or attend. In the future, we hope that having past examples of published podcasts will help students to understand the format and motivate them to contribute. It would also help to use class time to think about and write questions on the module because having it as an extra-curricular activity gave already busy students little time to engage. As a new and unfamiliar activity students would likely have benefitted from having in class time for it to be explained and to build questions suggestions with their classmates.
In the future, we hope to build this into the formal assessment of the module by asking students to submit a question and a short justification of their question as a part of the summative assessment. Our plan is to run a focus group with students where we work with them to design this assessment in ways that they would find most beneficial.
Overall, we felt that this approach to lectures held real potential to engage students and to give them the opportunity to ask important questions about the discipline. As critical pedagogues, we seek to create students who do not just passively receive the accepted knowledge, but critique and question it. This seems like one small way to make that real.
Looking for more podcast teaching resources? 1. John McMahon - Student Podcast Assignment 2. Rachel Torres - Podcasting as Asynchronous Learning 3. Kevin Kosar - Introduction to Congress Syllabus with Associated Podcast 4. Rogers Smith - Modern Constitutional Law Syllabus 5. William Gallagher - Politics Reconsidered
Endnotes
[1] See for example Ralph, Lightfoot and Head (2010) who use podcasts as supplements to lectures or Krain (2022) who assessed using podcasts.
References
Enloe, Cynthia. 1996. “Margins, silences and bottom rungs: how to overcome the underestimation of power in the study of international relations.” Chapter 8 in International Theory: Positivism and Beyond, eds. Steve Smith, Ken Booth, Marysia Zalewski. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
———. 2004. The Curious Feminist: Searching for Women in a New Age of Empire. Berkeley, CA: Univ of California Press.
Jarvis, Lee and Jack Holland. 2014. Security: A Critical Introduction. Bloomsbury Publishing: London
Krain, Matthew. 2022. “Pod Save IR: Podcasts as Effective Assignments in the International Relations Classroom.” International Studies Perspectives, online first, 1-20.
McGarr, Oliver. 2009. “A Review of Podcasting in Higher Education: Its Influence on the Traditional Lecture.” Australasian Journal of Educational Technology 25(3): 309-321.
Ralph, Jason, Naomi Head, and Simon Lightfoot. 2010. “Pol-casting: The use of Podcasting in the Teaching and Learning of Politics and International Relations.” European Political Science 9: 13-24.
Edison Research. 2022. “The Infinite Dial.” Accessed June 13, 2023 (http://www.edisonresearch.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/Infinite-Dial- 2022-Webinar-revised.pdf).
Louise Pears is a Lecturer in Global Security Challenges at Leeds University. Her research interests are in Feminist Security Studies, Popular Culture and World Politics, Race and Postcolonial International Relations, Critical Terrorism Studies and Research Methods. What underlies all these areas is an interest in “the margins, silences and bottom rungs” (Enloe, 1996) of International Relations.
Marine Guéguin is a research fellow at the Centre for Global Security Challenges at the University of Leeds. Her research interests are Security Studies, Terrorism, and Decolonial and Critical Terrorism Studies. She is the host of Insecure, A Security Podcast.
Harrion Swinhoe is a research fellow at the Centre for Global Security Challenges at the University of Leeds. His research interests cover Salafi-Jihadist discourses, particularly in relation to sovereignty, and critical constructivist approaches in security and terrorism. He is the host of Insecure, A Security Podcast.
Published since 2005, The Political Science Educator is the newsletter of the Political Science Education Section of the American Political Science Association. All issues of the The Political Science Educator can be viewed on APSA Connects Civic Education page.
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