Of course, I want listeners to recognize the creativity, detail, and overall presentation quality of the podcast. More importantly, however, it is the teaching and learning process that went into creating such a product that is paramount and makes it educationally sound.
Students were presented with an authentic challenge on the very first day of the unit that would guide and drive their learning throughout. All lectures, discussions, readings, and homework were held off until the challenge was known and fully understood. As a result, each student had a very clear goal and task in mind (create a podcast) while they were being exposed to and learning the material. With this purpose as a backdrop, their teachers were able to weave together mini-workshops and lessons that seemed to have more meaning and resonated on a deeper level with the students. Further, the steps to building the podcast were not simple to achieve and the requirements and expectations were extremely high. Students had to propose their ideas for their podcasts to a panel of judges, drafts of their scripts required several iterations, and the students were formally coached on how to verbally deliver their podcasts.
The culminating event took the form of a coffeehouse. Seated in lounge chairs and on sofas, students listened to one another's podcasts, then stood up after their own podcast was played to deliver oral presentations in which they reflected on their work and elucidated for their classmates the extent to which their podcasts provided a response to the project's essential questions. In all cases, students spoke about learning how to work as a team, learning how to conduct valuable research and incorporate their findings into their podcasts, and the feelings of accomplishment that come with making something unique and authentic using a digital platform."