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

Abstract

This paper describes an experimental learner-created podcasting assignment in a first-year undergraduate research skills course for professional writers. The podcasting assignment serves as a 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 and regimented 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's (2013) elaboration of participatory digital writing pedagogy.