In Defense of Wandering: Podcasting Pedagogy
NOTE: A condensed version of this article was published on The Humanities in Transition.
I’m tired of looking at my computer screen.
I dread logging onto yet another Zoom session.
I’ve never experienced eye strain before, but in the past few weeks, I have had almost daily headaches and blurry vision.
These are just a few of the end-of-semester comments that undergraduate and graduate students expressed to me following the transition to remote learning. I immediately recognized what my students were communicating as something that I, too, was dealing with: screen fatigue.
In addition to visual and mental exhaustion from staring at screens, many people studying and working from home due to the pandemic are experiencing physical discomfort associated with sitting at a desk for prolonged hours. My students have likewise expressed dissatisfaction with how much time they sit immobile in front of their computers—again, I can relate.
In an effort to protect the health of students, faculty, and staff, the University of British Columbia, where I teach, has announced that, other than courses that require in-person instruction (e.g., film production and music), classes will be completely remote in the fall. As I prepare for another semester of online teaching, I am taking to heart the above feedback and adapting my pedagogy in response to screen fatigue and inactivity. To do so, I draw from two practices that have gone hand-in-hand for millennia: learning and wandering.
The Virtues of Walking Around
From Charles Baudelaire’s flâneur to Henry David Thoreau’s “art of walking,” from the Situationalists’ psychogeography to W.G. Sebald’s walk along the Suffolk coast, wandering has been held as a font of aesthetic inspiration in the creative process and as an act that contains the seed of revolutionary potential. Friedrich Nietzsche held walking as vital to the task of philosophy, writing “Only thoughts which come from walking have any value” (62). This esteem for one of the simplest forms of human transport goes back to Aristotle, whose disciples formed part of the Peripatetic School. Meaning “given to walking about” (“Peripatetic”), this concept relates both to the columned walkways of the Lyceum where Aristotle taught in Athens and to his storied reputation for walking around while teaching.
Walking has also been important in my discipline: Latin American literature.
Manuel Maples Arce, leader of the avant-garde movement Estridentismo (Stridentism) in early-twentieth-century Mexico, insisted that art and aesthetic inspiration are derived from “the sensory stimuli of urban experience” (Flores 211). Later, Chilean poet and diplomat Pablo Neruda penned “Walking Around” in the midst of the Spanish Civil War (1936-39). With surrealist images, such as the juxtaposition of umbrellas, venom, and umbilical cords (verse 39), Neruda’s poetic voice confronts the violence of modernity and the desperation of the human condition while walking through an urban setting.
None of these intellectuals were particularly attuned to how differently abled people wander, which can take many forms. It’s more about moving through space and attending to one’s environment than walking per se. The benefits of such wandering go far beyond aesthetic inspiration.
Studies have shown that moving through both natural and urban spaces increases “creative ideation” (Oppezzo and Schwartz), boosts attention span (Tine and Butler), improves short-term and long-term knowledge retention (Weight et al.), and generates a sense of emotional wellbeing (Ettema and Smajic).
In the context of the pandemic, moderate exercise is doubly important, given that overall health is harmed by inactivity. A pervasive health consequence of recent social distancing measures is a rise in the incidence of protracted sedentariness, which results in lowered levels of Vitamin D. This is detrimental to COVID-19 patients, who are more likely to have severe reactions to the disease when they suffer from Vitamin D deficiency, as well as to people who do not contract COVID-19, given that long-term health may be adversely affected by prolonged inactivity (Carter et al. 1-2).
Apart from these lofty philosophical and scientific justifications, after months of self-isolation to slow the spread of the coronavirus, we could all benefit from some fresh air and wandering.
Learning in the Time of COVID-19
I teach Latin American literatures and cultures, so, in addition to brief lectures that contextualize readings and provide tools for literary analysis, my class sessions are chock full of small-group and whole-class discussions. When classes were moved online in mid-March, my principal goal was to avoid deploying new technologies, as I worried that students were learning new apps and platforms for multiple classes.
To that end, I recorded brief lectures (~10 minutes) over PowerPoint presentations and asked students to participate in Canvas discussion forums. This solution closely mimicked our prior in-class format, and students seemed satisfied with this approach.
I also sought feedback from students regarding how to make their unanticipated remote learning more meaningful. One suggestion was that I allow them to record oral reflections about class material instead of writing up responses for the discussion forum. Students noted that this would allow them to record on their phones—away from their computer screens—as well as to practice their spoken Spanish.
Little did I know that this practice would be valuable in other ways. Permitting recordings opened up a different form of reflection that was more creative—closer to the freewheeling discussions we had held in class. Students’ oral observations had a productive, meandering quality that was often more spontaneous than written responses while still thoughtful and rigorous.
As I prepare my courses for the upcoming academic year, I plan to encourage similar creative meandering that also allows students to reflect on course material away from their computer screens.
Wandering and/as Learning
Given that classes will not meet on campus, many students will not have access to a printer, so I recognize that they will spend a significant amount of time completing required readings on electronic devices. Likewise, all discussion sections and office hours will necessarily take place online. This means that course lectures and assignments will provide the greatest flexibility in terms of allowing students time away from their devices.
Serendipitously, this past spring I debuted a Latin American Studies course that incorporated podcasting as a learning outcome, so I am newly familiar with the sound editing software Audacity. I plan to put these new skills to use by preparing lectures as podcast episodes, which will be available for streaming and download on the course blog and Canvas (the learning management system used at UBC).
I will encourage students to listen to each episode away from their computer screens. This will not only combat screen fatigue but will also permit students to, ideally, learn on the move. In fact, one of my central objectives in designing both lectures and course assessments will be encouraging students to get outside—while practicing appropriate safety precautions and social distancing, of course—in order to listen to and reflect on course material.
In addition to the health benefits and positive learning outcomes listed above, listening to lectures while spending time on the move opens up possibilities for fieldwork and ethnographic observation. The course I am teaching in the fall relates to Indigenous foodways in Latin America, and two of the assignments ask students to take observational strolls, during which they consider local foodways and food practices in relation to the material they are learning in readings and podcast lectures.
In the first assignment, students will be asked to undertake a comparative analysis of their local food environment with that of one of the Latin American communities we study. As an example, one unit considers food deserts and the ways in which globalization and urban planning affect food security. Students will attend to the availability or scarcity of food in their own communities alongside this material.
The second assignment asks students to identify an instance of ayni, the Quechua practice of sacred reciprocity and mutualism among people and the earth. Ayni is sometimes translated as “today for me, tomorrow for you” (Villoldo), and it relates to giving without the expectation of receiving a corresponding “payment” in return. Instead, the culture of reciprocity means that, for instance, “today, you give me vegetables, because my crops died” and “tomorrow, I give you timber to fix your leaking roof.” Recent scholarship has shown that ayni contributes to food sovereignty, biodiversity, and food security in barter markets organized by Quechua peoples of the Peruvian Andes (Argumedo and Pimbert). Students will look for an act in their local food communities that reflects the spirit of ayni. This could be as ambitious as food exchanges that form part of a mutual aid organization or as simple as a bird feeder.
Both of these assignments make the best of the exceptional situation wrought by the coronavirus and remote learning. Given that my students will be spread out across the world, their observations and comparisons will be uniquely disparate in a way that could not occur if we were meeting together on campus. This puts a positive spin on remote learning and allows us to take advantage of learning together while far apart.
This task of “wandering” may look quite different for each student, as they may have different physical capabilities, disparate surroundings, and diverse restrictions related to social distancing measures. In every circumstance, I will encourage my students to meet with me to discuss what “wandering” will look like for them, and I will be flexible for students who prefer or require an adjusted assignment.
In Wanderlust: A History of Walking, Rebecca Solnit observes that “Walking itself is the intentional act closest to the unwilled rhythms of the body, to breathing and the beating of the heart. It strikes a delicate balance between working and idling, being and doing. It is a bodily labor that produces nothing but thoughts, experiences, arrivals” (5). My approach to online teaching seeks to facilitate such thoughts, arrivals, and experiences through a semester of wandering, both aimless and purposeful.
Equitable and Inclusive Learning
Similar to many podcasts, I will prepare a landing page (like this one by 99% Invisible) for each episode with lecture notes, images, and links to pertinent online resources and secondary readings. While students may get away from their computer screens to listen to the podcast lecture, this differentiated instruction style will be more equitable for myriad reasons.
First, UBC students will be taking courses from across the world, and asynchronous lectures will be equally convenient across time zones. Furthermore, asynchronous lectures allow students to take in information at their own pace. And students with complicated home situations—perhaps they have small children or many roommates that share common spaces—may access recordings when it is optimal for their learning.
Second, the scripted nature of a podcast means that each lecture will already have an accompanying transcript, which will be posted on the landing page. The transcript, online materials, and graphics will facilitate learning for visual learners as well as students with hearing impairments.
Third, students have widely different technological resources at home. Now that students will not have access to campus computer labs and university Wi-Fi, I cannot guarantee that typing up assignments, downloading hefty PowerPoint files, or viewing streaming lectures will be equally feasible for all students. By providing podcast lectures and mobile-friendly landing pages, students learning on smartphones will have an easier time accessing material. Likewise, students will be given the option of typing or recording weekly assignments, which allows maximum flexibility for students who do not have easy access to a computer.
Finally, leveraging podcasts as a pedagogical tool will allow me to incorporate Indigenous voices in a way that traditional course lectures would not. For instance, I will include the Toasted Sister Podcast interview with Neftalí Duran in the unit on Indigenous migration and diaspora. In this way, students will hear from a Mixteco chef and be prompted to consider course topics alongside the lived experience of Latin American people.
The Humanities Moving Forward
The precipitous shift to remote teaching and learning due to the pandemic has not always been a seamless process. However, in many cases, it has encouraged instructors to experiment with diverse technologies, to have conversations with colleagues and students about teaching strategies, and to purposefully revisit pedagogical endeavors with an open mind.
My hope is that these pedagogical practices allow humanities scholars to become nimbler at incorporating new technologies into research dissemination in a meaningful way, and I am optimistic that this unanticipated year of online teaching may effect that change. Educators have been fairly open to utilizing new media, applications, and platforms in teaching during the pandemic, and an ideal outcome would be that researchers are therefore more equipped to convey their scholarly findings across different media and in different registers.
Ideally, this would also allow researchers to train humanities students in new technologies, so that humanists graduate with greater digital literacy to complement the rigorous training in critical thinking, literary analysis, language proficiency, and research methodologies that we already provide.
Tips for Podcast Lectures
If you’re interested in peripatetic pedagogy, here are some tips to get started.
Content tips:
- Be less formal than you might in a traditional lecture. This is a more conversational register. Emoting is also a plus for listener engagement.
- Sentences should be shorter (no longer than one breath—you don’t want to inhale mid-sentence).
- Keep the podcast lectures shorter than a typical class period. I aim for 20 minutes per lecture.
- Record one intro and one outro, and reuse those across your lecture episodes. This will give continuity to the content and save you lots of time across the semester.
- Branch out with podcast format. For instance, you might invite an expert to do a guest lecture or join you for an interview.
- Be mindful of intellectual property concerns. If you don’t want the podcast lectures to become available to the public, make sure to post them behind a login. On this note, check your university’s policy about who owns the pedagogical resources you create for your classes.
- If you do post them publicly, take care to consider copyright laws while selecting music for your podcast. This site provides legal guidance and has links to free music.
- Ask your students for feedback after you’ve delivered 3-4 lectures.
Technology tips:
- Record in a quiet room with little ambient noise.
- Consider borrowing an external USB microphone to improve the sound quality. Check with your university and public library for equipment rentals (they often rent them for free).
- You can also record voice notes on your smartphone, which have a higher quality than computer speakers. I used this one before I purchased a microphone.
- Keep the landing page simple. You can use a free blogging platform, like WordPress, to host your site. Then you simply create a blog entry for each lecture. Copy and paste the transcript as it is, and then include links, photos, and videos that enhance the transcript.
- Edit the metadata on each track so that the lectures will be organized when your students download them.
- Perfectionism is not your friend. These are not NPR-ready podcasts, so you do not have to edit relentlessly and do multiple takes to get perfect content.
- If you have a question, Google it. Many brilliant instructors have done this before and shared advice online. Take advantage of their generosity and experience.