Learner-Created Podcasts: Fostering Information Literacies in a Writing Course

Abstract

This paper describes an experimental learner-created podcasting assignment in a first-year This paper describes an experimental learner-created podcasting assignment in a first-year undergraduate research skills course for professional writers. The podcasting assignment serves asa contextualized experiential writing project that invites students to refine their research skills by participating in the invention of an emerging genre of radio storytelling. The power of the podcast assignment lies in the liminal space it creates for learners. It moves students beyond familiar andregimented essay conventions to an unstable writing environment where digital tools for producing, publishing, and negotiating meaning offer a range of possible audiences, modalities, forms, and modes of meaning making. This space creates the pedagogical conditions for epistemic development, through which students adopt as their own the research practices of adept and experienced writers. The multiple demands of this course on writing, research, and digital environments generates the beginnings of interdisciplinary writing pedagogy involving Kent’s (1993, 1999) postprocess mindset, the ACRL’s (2015) Framework for Information Literacy in Higher Education, Baxter Magolda’s (1999) constructive-developmental pedagogy, and Arroyo (2013)’s elaboration of participatory digital writing pedagogy.

Where is the Support? Learning Support for Multimodal Digital Writing Assignments by Writing Centres in Canadian Higher Education

“…In another example of fetishization, Silver (2019) reports of faculty describing "digital media [as] merely 'technical' know-how" (p. 221) and has observed students belittling design "as merely 'an art project'" (p. 220). Through our own experience teaching with learner-created podcasts (see Bell, 2019), we have found a range of similar responses often together with a prevalence of anxiety.…”

“A podcast would be fun!”: The fetishization of digital writing projects

“…Fetishization that obscures the more-than-human nature of plurilingual digital composing can reduce writers' sensitivity to the power of their writing tools. Bell (2019) observes that undergraduate students producing podcasts tend to think of recording and post-production as final stages of a linear project rather than as tools in an iterative writing process. When left to their own devices, students focus on writing podcast scripts in word processors, and they leave the microphone as a day-before-thedeadline task.…”

“…However, students who do show up at writing centres come with serious concerns about DWPs. In our writing centres, discussions with students about DWPs tend to be less focused on enthusiasm and more dominated by anxiety (see Bell, 2019).…”

Tooling up the Multi: Paying Attention to Digital Writing Projects at the Writing Centre

“…Problem-solving, therefore, is not only a cognitive but also an affective set of skills. Understanding this is important particularly for multimodal digital writing projects because they, as observed by Bell (2019), can cause a "decentering of [the] certainty and comfort" (p. 60) that more familiar writing assignments provide students. Bell explains that this decentering can cause some students to feel more anxious than they usually feel about coursework and even resentful of the challenge presented by the assignment.…”