Teaching Podcasting: Formats For Your Students
by: Sutiweyu Sandoval
Sutiweyu Sandoval has been educating youth within arts/dance/music for nearly 20 years. He merges theory and practice with social-emotional learning and peer support. Sutiweyu currently leads Podcasting and Music Production workshops in our Building Beats LA classrooms.
Image from Pixabay
In the last post, we went in-depth on the subject of increasing student engagement through guiding students into becoming an actual production team. We briefly talked about formats, with the promise that we would dig deeper in another post. Here we are.
Here, we’ll be using the term “Structure” to describe the arrangement of people the listener will hear and how they are engaging. The term “format” will be used to describe how the structure engages with the theme.
Let’s illustrate this a little more clearly with an example: Your students decide to share their most comedic experiences from riding public transportation in a class discussion. The structure would be discussion/panel and the format would be personal narratives.
Here is a short list of structures and formats in no particular order that can be creatively combined in any way the students can imagine:
Formats
Structures
Journalism
Educational
Lists
Op-Ed/Hot Take
Personal Narrative
True Stories
Fiction
Industry/Pathway Knowledge
Reviews
Monologue
Interview
Discussion/Panel
DJing
Audio Drama
Structures
Image by Sound On
Monologue:
Features a single person speaking. It can work with any of the formats and is the simplest, from a production standpoint. Only one microphone is needed and mix engineering will be simpler with only a single voice to edit.
Interview:
The interviewer asks questions of the guest. This format is also fairly universal but really shines when it comes to Journalism, Personal Narratives and Industry/Pathway Knowledge.
Discussion/Panel:
One or more topics are explored by multiple people. You can distinguish between discussions and panels by saying that a panel has a moderator whose responsibility it is to present the topics and guide the conversation so that each party has an equitable opportunity to share. Discussions can be more freeform, in comparison.
This structure is best used with Personal Narratives, Op-ed/Hot Takes and Industry/Pathway Knowledge.
DJing:
One or more people present and discuss music. This could involve minimal speech like the DJ just giving a little information about the song and artist or it could be a lot more involved like a theme being curated for each episode and the DJ talks about what themes, styles, origins connect the music and what it means to them. This structure can actually be merged with others to create a hybrid.
The formats this works well with are Educational, Lists and Reviews.
Audio Drama:
An original or adapted presentation that is scripted and contains not just dialogue being performed dramatically, but also musical cues and sound effects.
It’s easily the most challenging structure and requires a significant amount of planning. For this reason, we suggest it for teens and older.
True Stories, Fiction and Non-fiction are the way to go with this structure.
Formats
Image by Madison Inouye
Journalism:
Sharing information, social issues and current events for public benefit.
As with all formats, this one can have almost infinite variations. Segments could focus on news pertaining to special interests, local events, global affairs or investigative journalism with a correspondent in the field.
I recommend this one for middle-schoolers and above. Research and compiling can be tedious and younger students will have their patience and attendance spans tested.
Educational:
Sharing information or doing a deep dive on a specific subject. Super similar to journalism but a broader scope. Think school reports. The list of topics and themes available is nearly infinite.
This format works for all ages. Younger students can read a page from the science textbook and older students can do something with more depth.
Lists:
This one is pretty self-explanatory. Lists can be generalized like “10 ways to improve your study sessions” or hierarchical like “The 5 best episodes of your favorite show (ranked).”
This format can be really fun especially since once the topic/theme of the list is decided, the entire class can contribute to its creation.
All ages can enjoy this one and it can range from informative to entertaining.
Op-Ed/Hot Take:
One or more people providing personal and highly subjective views on a subject. Usually a subject of current relevance.
Students of this generation are flooded with current events, celebrity scandals, fashion tips and all kinds of other content from around the world. They have opinions on all of it. Prompt and then record those opinions.
This one is more appropriate for teens and older. At this age, students are more likely to have started forming their own opinions about a wider range of things that impact their lives.
Personal Narrative:
Stories told in the first person based on lived experiences. This can be individuals or groups united by a shared category of experience.
With younger students if can be simple, playful narratives like “What happened on my favorite field trip” and older students can create deeper content like “Here’s an experience that shaped me as a person.”
This one is good for all ages. Additionally, this format has the potential to facilitate bonding as students share experiences that other students might really resonate with.
True Stories:
Secondhand narratives about events that have occurred at some point in the past. “True Crimes” is a spectacularly popular version of this format but it could just as easily be inspirational stories, entertaining adventures or hilarious antics.
This is appropriate for middle-school and above simply because it requires faithful translation of another's narrative. Younger students might be more inclined to paraphrase, omit or forget aspects of the story being present unless it’s tightly scripted.
industry/pathway knowledge:
Technically, a subcategory of “Educational,” this one tends to focus on how to attain a goal, advance within a field or maintain wellness within that field. “How to get into an ivy league school”, “Scoring that internship you want” “Social activism for youth” or “Best mental health practices for athletes” could all be examples of this.
Due to the high level of specialized knowledge needed to present something authoritative like this, I recommend this format for teens and above. Whether the content comes from personal knowledge or is researched, it’s unlikely that younger students would have the patience to research/compile it.
Reviews
One or more people giving feedback to the public about a service, product or experience. This has the potential to be one of the most fun formats since the feedback is likely to be candid instead of professionally formatted. Students can review fashion, games, movies, school events, neighborhood festivals or basically anything.
Definitely an all ages format. This and “Lists” are the 2 formats that have the highest potential to be fun or silly especially if the topic is a playful one.
While these examples of structures and formats are in no way exhaustive, it should give you some ideas of how to shape podcasts that your students will resonate with.
And please don’t hesitate to mix and match or create a variety podcast that uses multiple formats in a single episode. Get creative!
Just in case you missed it, here is part 1 on assigning roles for students.