Scheduling synchronous professional development workshops for busy faculty is difficult. One can listen to podcasts, however, while commuting/traveling, exercising, etc. Our teaching center launched a professional development podcast called Tea for Teaching during fall 2017. This session will consist of a live interactive podcast on podcasting for professional development.
Scheduling synchronous professional development workshops for faculty is difficult. Busy faculty and commuting faculty often find it challenging to participate remotely using Zoom (or similar web conferencing tools) or asynchronously using recorded video workshops where focused attention is necessary. In contrast, one can listen to podcasts while commuting/traveling, exercising, cooking, etc. Our teaching center launched a weekly podcast called Tea for Teaching during the fall 2017 semester. This podcast quickly grew to reach an international audience with listeners in 97 countries as well as all 50 states.
Show notes and a transcript are provided on our website to accompany each podcast to allow listeners to explore a topic in greater depth.and to provide an accessible alternative. This models appropriate practice for our faculty but also reaches a surprisingly large audience of faculty who prefer to read transcripts instead of listening to the podcast audio.
This podcast has allowed us to reach a larger proportion of our own faculty than in any other form of professional development activity. By mixing local exemplars of effective teaching practice with nationally recognized guests, it has raised the visibility of effective teaching practice in our academic community.
In this session, we'll share lessons learned, challenges faced, and the feedback we've received since the launch. Particular focus will be placed on starting a podcast with a small budget. Details on software, hardware, and technical requirements will be provided. Methods of recording remote guests will also be discussed.
This session will be recorded as a podcast episode for later release. Participants in the session will be polled during the session on their own use of podcasts for professional development, on their professional development needs, and on what they look for in a podcast. The results of the poll will be shared and discussed during the session (as well as in the show notes). The session will conclude with a Q&A session. Participants in the Q&A will be given the option of being included in the final recording or having their comments excluded.