Awarded Projects 2024/25
Awarded Projects 2024/25
Introduction
The Public and Community Engagement Module Development Fund supports projects which develop new opportunities for students to learn about and practise public or community engagement within taught modules. Students are employed as co-creators to design these opportunities with staff, and some projects involve partners in the design phase too.
On this page you can read about projects funded in 2024-25.
Globalisation, diversity and public engagement: Putting theory into practice through podcasting as module assessment
Stephanie Schnurr, Duncan Lees, Matthew Turner, Marianna Patrick, Yvette Wang, Joel Agius, Diana Wang, and VC Zhang (Applied Linguistics)
This project is a collaboration between staff, PGT and PGR students in Applied Linguistics with the aim to redesign one of our current MSc modules on "Globalisation and Diversity in the Workplace." Introducing the design and production of a podcast as an assignment, this module will enable students to understand and carry out public engagement and equip them with increasingly relevant professional skills.
As part of our MSc in Intercultural Communication for Business and the Professions, the module has long emphasised putting theory into practice by applying scholarship and research to real-life contexts. The new podcasting assignment directly addresses these aims, by encouraging students to put theory into practice while drawing upon their own interests and resources and sharing different voices. The podcasts will be published and made available to a wide audience beyond the university, furthering their reach and becoming a public showcase of what the students have achieved.
July 2025 update
Project overview:
Drawing on IATL’s “Key Questions to Consider” for staff-student co-creation, we have tried to involve students through the module revision project: first, to “define the issue or opportunity” by involving the students in discussing what a revised module should look like, including through the incorporation of podcasting; next to “develop a response”, by having the students contribute to the funding application and collect feedback on the module from their peers; then to “deliver the project”, including the creation of the pilot podcasts; and finally to “determine how successful it has been”, which can be seen in the inclusion of their reflections in this report (below).
This co-creative process has resulted in the following changes:
• We have changed the title, the week-by-week content, and the assessment of the existing module to include and emphasise the public engagement element of the module more clearly
• The revised content also emphasises more clearly the various links between theory and real-life application, giving students a more concrete picture of how what they learn on this module enables them to drive social change and ultimately make the world a better place
• The new assessment is now a podcast, which will allow future students on the module to spend less time debating what form the response to their chosen topic should take, and more time actually doing the public engagement element of the project as they engage with relevant stakeholders and produce their response in the form of a podcast. It will also allow staff to deliver more targeted support (specifically aimed at podcasting), helping students to produce high quality podcasts which can be shared beyond the university
• Following their attendance at a WIE podcast training session, the PGT and PGR collaborators produced two pilot podcasts as proof of concept, and to serve as examples to inspire future groups of students on the module. These two podcasts will be made publicly available soon, with podcasts made by future students also to be shared
• We have also done a conference presentation at the EPOD (Education through Podcasting) 2025 conference with three of our student collaborators (two PGTs, one PGR) and are about to submit a publication on our experiences and the educational value of using podcasts as assessment format, with the student collaborators listed as co-authors
Benefits of co-creation:
Having students act as “consultants”, “representatives”, “co-researchers” and “pedagogical co-designers” (Bovill at al. 2016) across the various stages of the project has allowed us to elicit more detailed, open feedback from other students who have taken the module (in a way that it would be difficult for teaching staff to achieve), and to incorporate these views and those of our student collaborators in the revision of module content and assessment.
Involving PGT and PGR students in discussion, planning and delivering has been inspiring for everyone involved, and has contributed to a more inclusive, less hierarchical staff-student relationship through which the student collaborators have experienced more agency, and come to be recognised as bearers of valuable knowledge and expertise in their own right.
Student reflections:
“As a PhD student teaching on the Globalisation & Diversity module, creating a podcast with the MSc students opened up fresh ways of looking at the module material. It helped me think about how the topics we explore in class play out in the real world and also allowed me to interact and discuss them with students in a more informal setting. In the podcast episode I co-created, I spoke with a deaf cricket player who shared his experiences playing in both deaf and hearing teams, and the communication challenges that arose on and off the pitch. Hearing his story first-hand helped me consider issues of communication in sport in ways that no lecture ever could.”
“It was great to work alongside an experience PhD student who asked us tricky (but the right) questions to edge us MSc students in the right direction. We were quite competent but bouncing ideas off a PhD student made me think deeper about my choices and even how I operate in a team.”
“As student creators in the podcast world, we bridged theory and lived experiences (identity, representation, inclusion…) hearing voices makes them more grounded and relevant. Instead of hearing about theories/writing them in essays we explored them in real life scenarios - deepening our understanding. Multiple theoretical lenses come out of a single story (for example, language, power, culture, identity, exclusion etc) which add depth and colour to academic theory. We also learned about how to represent sensitive stories fairly, accurately and ethically - also adding another dimension to our process of theory in practice. Secondly, we learned about interviewing as a skill: How to create and ask open and thoughtful questions and to really listen. Confidence in guiding questions and giving space to share authentically. Learning to edit the voices helped us to learn how narratives are shaped post-production. How to preserve meaning while not distorting speakers’ voices. Handling tools and software such as Audacity and developing basic proficiency alone was a valuable technical skill. Confidence through doing - we created something professional and meaningful from scratch which we are proud of, proud of our speakers for participating in it and developed creative ideas for the future.”
Sharing our learning:
A representative group of the team (including one staff member, two PGTs and one PGR) attended a podcasting conference in London (funded by Applied Linguistics) where they presented our project and shared their experience and the educational value created by the podcasting. This was a not only a fantastic chance for the students to showcase their achievements in this project, but also attending and presenting at a conference was a fantastic opportunity in itself.
Similarly, we have been able to follow this presentation with a chapter co-authored by all of the staff and student collaborators, which we will submit imminently for inclusion in a scholarly volume on educational podcasting. Writing this has been a great opportunity for all of us to reflect on the project outcomes, and getting co-author credit will be an unexpected bonus of the project for the PGTs in particular.
