TRANSCRIPT: Tales of Teaching Online ep. 62: Reflections on 2022 for Tales of Teaching Online

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Intro: Digital, student-centred, creative, innovation, imagination, initiative, stories that matter.

Joan Sutherland: I’m Joan Sutherland and this is Tales of Teaching Online, brought to you by Deakin Learning Futures. Hello and welcome to the final podcast of Tales of Teaching Online for 2022. My name is Joan Sutherland and I’m one of the presenters on this podcast. I wanted to take this time on behalf of the team to say thank you for listening to Tales of Teaching Online. We’ve had a great time producing it and love sharing our insights into teaching online. As I sit here though, and look back on 2022, I reflect on what we’ve learned. One of the biggest things for me has been the power of podcasting and how different mediums can really create powerful narratives.

So sometimes it can be easy to get caught up with the latest and greatest. But it’s important to consider what we are doing, why we are doing it, and the impact we are having. I believe this is particularly important in education. So we’ve produced over 60 podcasts so far. We’ve had listeners from over 50 countries. So we are sharing our experiences with educators on the other side of the world – that, I’m excited about. But not only that, we’ve provided a platform for those that are doing these innovative things and enhancing teaching and learning. A platform to share what they have learnt within the education community. So before I share why and how we have done this, I wanted to share that this isn’t a one person show. So I wanted to give a shout out to all of the people involved.

To Tim Downey, who’s been our editor. He’s helped us edit the recordings and added beginnings and endings, which has been essential for efficiency in getting the podcast out every fortnight. So, thank you. Thank you to Timothy Robinson. He’s helped really help with the promotion of the podcast, review the workflow and follow up with the podcast promotion. So, thank you. To the presenters Jo Elliott, Tara Draper, Laura Tubino, Barbie Panther, Chie Adachi, all of whom who have contributed throughout the year. So, thank you. But last but not least, to all of the educators sharing their stories to the audience, taking the time out of their day to share what they’re doing, what they’ve learned, and how this can inform future iterations, what other people can do in their teaching and learning space as well. So, thank you so much. I know I’ve learned so much from the different educators I’ve interviewed and I look forward to learning a lot more.

But I suppose one key thing I get asked that, although podcasting is a great medium, how do you actually do it? Okay, so I’m going to share with you the tips and tricks I give people to get started with the podcast. So first you need to answer why you’re doing a podcast. So when Deakin University, like the rest of higher education, had to transition everything online due to COVID-19, we already knew there were pockets of innovation happening across the University.

We knew there was a lot going across the teaching and learning space with many teaching teams already online. We knew there was a lot of information, a lot of insights to share so others could learn along the way. So, we wanted to share this not only internally, but with an external audience because we knew it was important for our higher education in general. But we didn’t know how, we didn’t know what was the best way to do this. Which led us to how do we share this information? There are many different mediums that we could have chosen, but we knew there were many stories that needed to be told, not just at the beginning of the pandemic, but in an ongoing capacity. Another thing that was important for us was to give the educators a voice. A voice to share their perspective, their narrative, what they learned and what advice they would share with others. This is when we looked into podcasting and decided this was the best medium because it would create the narrative, it would enable us to share the voices of the people that were implementing the innovative practices in their teaching and learning and showcase what they have learned. So that’s why we decided on a podcast. And I encourage you to look at different mediums, not just podcasting, see what works for you. So, what did we do to make it happen?

So, it doesn’t just happen with so many stakeholders involved. It’s important to have a process or workflow that’s integral to ensure the podcast was able to be produced on a fortnightly basis. You’re probably rolling your eyes thinking process, but it really did enable all stakeholders to know what they needed to do and when they needed to do it. So it included things you may expect people to know through technical specifications of recording through Zoom, how to set up the podcast, how to record it, where it goes for editing, how to upload it, things like costing, renewal information, themes, topics, a lot of information was included in that workflow. So whoever, if I was to drop out, someone else was to come in, they would be able to take up the podcast at any given point.

So once the workflow was created, there was always someone driving it. And if, like us, you’re thinking of having multiple presenters, it is so important that someone leads the podcast because ultimately this takes time, it takes persistence, it takes follow up, especially if you’re posting on a regular basis. So this was me and our team – prompting others regularly and ensuring we had enough podcasts recorded to upload on a fortnightly basis. Looking at the forecasting, what are we actually doing in the future? How does it align with our goals, our priorities? And who can we showcase and how can we showcase it? And then finally, it was just really a matter of recording. First thing I hear from a lot of people is I hate the sound of my own voice. I don’t love mine either, but you know what, I know that I’m sharing things that we’re learning along the way. I’m sharing narratives and that’s more powerful than how I actually feel about my voice. So, I just encourage you just to get started. Get started, see how you go and just keep going with it if it’s fit for purpose. So, there you have it. Tales of Teaching Online. I suppose, feel free to reach out if you have any questions or would like some more information. But first, what’s going to be different next year?

So, we’ve previously had multiple presenters, but I’m going to be your host throughout 2023. And what things can you look forward to? So, we’ll be looking at through a number of different topics, but some of the ones I’m really excited about is around cybersecurity and how this impacts teaching and learning, and what you can do about it. Sustainable innovation. We love innovation, but how do we make it sustainable? We’ll be having guests using different technologies such as Microsoft 365. Looking at artificial intelligence, very hot topic at the moment. How it’s informing, how we interact, how we teach, how we work in higher education now and in the future. And a number of different things through connection, sense of belonging, how you can leverage digital technology in the higher education space. So, as we say goodbye to 2022, I want to say thank you again for coming along the journey and I look forward to sharing many more stories with you in 2023. So thank you for listening and we look forward to supporting you us in the future. Thank you.