Abstract:

The South African higher education landscape has been fraught with inequality and the lack of inclusion of all students (Pillay & Aghardien, 2021). Similar global higher education challenges faced include massification, poverty, diverse student bodies and limited resources. Thus remaining responsive to learning and teaching in Higher Education environments warrants a concern with difference, disruption, transformation and care. Not only do educators need an epistemological understanding of how learning happens (Lange, 2014), but we also need to be concerned with equitable, opportunities for learning in open, flexible and caring ways. To this end, we share some reflections on and learnings of two separate projects focused on creating podcasts as open educational resources (OER). An audio podcast is a relatively small digital file made available on the internet that can be used on a smart device. These files may be downloaded and listened to later without access to the internet or streamed. The podcasts created by the authors are in the areas of academic support and social work education. We have created these podcasts to advance the notion of open education – part of the education as public good discourse - and an underpinning philosophy that values dialogic, student-centred, relational and flexible learning. We take care to highlight, like Houlden and Veletsianos (2021, preprint version), that flexibility resides at the “liberatory”/”regulatory” nexus and thus goes beyond simplistic any time anywhere learning claims. Rather we argue that using podcasts as a tool for pedagogical, dialogic and relational learning holds value for mediating thinking, doing and being (identity formation). We are interested in enhancing emotional connections (Popova & Edirisingha, 2010), developing indigenous knowledge for the South African context, fostering ethical, social and spiritual well-being towards a better world for all (Aghardien, 2022). Further, the focus on meaningful engagement and student empowerment as suggested by Zimba, Khosa and Pillay (2021) partly motivated our choice of tool usage. Offering multiple ways to engage with content beyond the classroom is another reason we chose to develop podcasts. We wanted to ensure that we care for the students we have in front of us in ways that take into account formal as well as informal spaces and places. Podcasts are a powerful tool that has the ability to connect with the listener using voice to convey the passion of experts directly. The spoken word does influence both cognition (adding clarity and meaning) and motivation (by directly conveying a sense of the person creating those words (Durbridge, 1984). In this presentation we share some recommendations for educators wishing to develop educational podcasts based on our experiences.

Keywords:

Dialogic, flexibility, open education, open educational resources (OER), podcasts, South Africa.