Assigned Listenings as a Classroom Tool (PI: Meg Wilcox): As we work toward building a more inclusive university that encourages and makes use of different ways of knowing, educators are looking to expand their classroom resources beyond the traditional textbooks or journal articles.

Since Winter 2017, Prof. Wilcox has developed and offered a podcasting course that uses podcast episodes as weekly assigned listenings in place of weekly readings — while the students have responded positively to the assignments in formal and informal class feedback, she’s looking to explore the impact of assigned listenings more formally. In this study, Prof. Wilcox hopes to determine whether or not assigned listenings increase student participation, as well as investigating students’ perceived educational benefits and challenges with freely-accessible podcast listenings as opposed to assigned readings.

This SoTL-focused project will assess the effectiveness of assigned listenings via data on student assignment submissions as well as student surveys and focus groups. Data collection for this study begins Fall 2022.