Listening @Warwick
About the Project
This podcast project aimed to listen-in to conversations about blended learning. Our virtual 'listening room' brought together both students and staff, to reflect upon, discuss, and learn from the experiences of an extraordinary year to move to a place of understanding and of partnership.
How it worked
Unscripted conversations between pairs of Social Science students on a range of topics related to teaching and learning during 20/21 were recorded by our student podcast producers. A parallel process captured conversations between colleagues who teach within the Social Sciences, supported by staff members of the project team. These conversations formed the basis of a podcast series. At the end of the process students and staff were invited to come together in a virtual listening room to listen, learn, and consider the implications for blended learning.
Project Aims
- Added a more human dimension to survey-based evaluation data and SSLCs in order to create shared understanding. This project celebrated the power of individual experience, sharing personal stories of learning during lockdown in conversation to shape educational futures.
- Enabled students and staff to ‘speak truth to power’ by sharing ‘ground up’ knowledge outside of formal reporting structures.
- Produced a podcast series that captures the experiences, expertise, and aspirations of students and colleagues, with the hope that others might wish to replicate, adopt or adapt similar ways of listening to students and creating space for student voices to be heard within their own practice.
Project Impact
Students
Gained insight into how students are experiencing blended learning. This was invaluable to support students in response to the more immediate demands of pandemic pedagogy, and considering which elements of blended learning have the ability to enhance student learning and outcomes as we re-shape the ‘new normal’, integrating the most powerful features of online learning with the strengths of on campus learning.
Participants
Offered those individuals participating in the project the insights into the power of sharing ‘taken-for-granted’ experience and seeing experiences through the perspective of others
Staff
Disseminated learning for the staff and student community, not only from the output of the project itself, but also the process of undertaking the project. We therefore created ‘how it was made’ materials to support colleagues to initiate and undertake similar projects in their own work.
Project Team
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Project Team
Grace Okutubo (PPL), Charlie Humphrey (Life Sciences), Georgia Smithies (FAB), Jim Judges (Academic Technology)