Introduction
In the spirit of open exchange and within the context of the 2024 Teaching & Learning Symposium at UW-Madison, we’re excited to share the story behind the creation of the L&S Exchange, particularly as it relates to higher education and the IDC’s commitment to educational outreach. As we emerged from the challenges of the pandemic, it felt natural to embrace technology and the power of audio to connect with instructors and academic staff across the College of Letters & Science. Offering an alternative to traditional in-person interactions, our podcast provides both listeners and guests with a convenient and powerful way to engage.
In our current landscape, we’re faced with important questions: How can we maximize the impact of our small team? How do we scale solutions to benefit a wider audience? And how do we navigate social media responsibly, ensuring it serves our mission and community? While these are complex issues we’re still exploring, we’re inspired by the potential for meaningful insights and positive outcomes.
In this book we are documenting our process in the hopes of creating a “field guide” for others interested in podcasting in higher education. We aim to periodically revise this book as we refine our process.
Background
We began work in 2022 on the heels of a departmental reorganization, which situated us within L&S Teaching and Learning Administration (TLA) and gave us new strategic priorities. Two of those priorities gave definition to our unit’s strategic planning: (1) encouraging more inclusive teaching practices and (2) supporting productive dialogue about teaching within L&S departments.
Through a SWOT analysis, we situated podcasting as both a strength and an opportunity for our team. Our team had collaborated to design podcasting assignments and seen an increasing interest in multimedia assignments. Making a show of our own presented an opportunity to deepen our expertise.
Taken together, these factors became the seed of an idea: creating a podcast that centered inclusive teaching and could support the L&S community in having productive discussions about teaching practices.
