Simple, Mobile, Engaging: Podcasts Pack eLearning Punch

It seems elusive, a mirage shimmering in the distance: Short,engaging eLearning that learners actually want to consume, delivered anywhere,anytime in a flexible, accessible format. Best of all, this eLearning can beproduced inexpensively using skills and tools you already have.

Podcasts fit the bill, but, oddly, are absent from manycompanies’ eLearning toolboxes. Nevertheless, podcasts provide what manyinstructional designers and developers seek.

“Honestly, it’s so easy; I don’t know why anybody would notdo it. It is one of the easiest types of media you can make, unless you want toget really fancy with your postproduction sound editing,” said Ty Marbut, theexecutive producer at Ty Marbut Instructional Video.

According to Joseph Meyer, a multimedia specialist with theNationwide Claims Training Organization, podcasting has “been overlooked in theeLearning world because of all of the new tech, the emerging tech—and becauseit is somewhat of an antiquated idea, that you basically make a radio show.”

The essence of a podcast

Hanna Umanskiy, a video producer at the Federal JudicialCenter who creates podcasts as part of her eLearning strategy, emphasizesaccessibility. “Podcasts are one of the most convenient eLearning tools that wecan offer to our learners. It’s like listening to an audiobook or a radioshow—at your own convenience!”

Among the attributes she extols are on-demand access, theability to stream or download, and the lack of a tether—to a location, adevice, even the Internet. “Podcast is beautiful in its simplicity andconvenience,” Umanskiy said in an email interview. Learners “could listen to anew episode on their daily commute or lunch break, day or night. Even on aplane—the Internet connection is no longer needed; you can download an episodeto your device.”

Calling something a podcast brings with it certainconnotations, according to Marbut. “Every type of media that we use that doesn’tlook like ‘Next’ buttons on a PowerPoint has a history outside of eLearning,”Marbut said. People come to eLearning with expectations for that media, whethervideo—or podcasts. “If you call something a podcast, it better be interestingand relevant and have a host who is friendly and interesting to listen to; itbetter have the features of a podcast, or else you have done yourself adisservice by calling it that.” He identified the following essential features:

• Podcasts are serial. “I am sure that there havebeen one-off podcasts. But I guarantee that if you tell someone, ‘Well, we’regoing to have a podcast,’ that immediately evokes the idea that it’s serial innature and that [episodes] will hopefully be of similar quality to each other,”Marbut said.
• Episodes must be planned. “To evoke the sort offeeling that I would expect to see in a podcast, I think that it needs to beplanned like you would plan a film shoot. I think that it needs to bestoryboarded. I think you need to be thinking about multiple levels of stuffgoing on, so it’s not just one person’s voice,” he said. Episodes should besimilar in structure, too, Marbut said, citing Car Talk and ThisAmerican Life as examples of podcasts whose listeners know what to expectfrom each episode.
• There is an expectation that somepost-production work has been done—at least music and voice, maybe addingambient sound. “I want to see that you can be a little bit creative and makesomething that sounds like a radio show,” he said.
• At the same time, it needs to be authentic. “Thatis the absolute key word for me,” Marbut said, adding that too much ortoo-perfect production can harm authenticity. “As we try to push productionvalue higher and higher, we actually drop off a cliff of how authentic it looksto our learners.”

The length of a podcast varies, but brevity is one key tosuccess. “No matter how fascinating your topic and guest are, not everybodycan dedicate a whole hour to listening to an episode of podcast,” Umanskiysaid. “On average, the length of a single episode varies from 30 minutesto one minute. Yes, one minute!” Umanskiy will teach participantsto create ultra-short “micro podcasts” during a daylong pre-conference workshop on October 23 at DevLearn 2017 Conference & Expo.

Meyer, along with Jeffrey D’Anza, a design consultant withNationwide Insurance, emphasizes story, turning what could be dull mandatorytraining into something that people want to listen to. “It doesn’t matter howgood your production value is, how good your sound effects are, if the storyyou’re telling isn’t an engaging one. You have to hook the person in and makethem want to keep listening,” D’Anza said. You can add in all sorts of “bellsand whistles,” but “at the end of the day, if the learner is not interested inthe story that’s being told, it’s not going to matter what’s in there.”

Meyer and D’Anza will present a DevLearn 2017 session on using story to make audio eLearning engaging. “Our hope isthat when we present our case—‘Hey, we came from insurance; it’s tough to findanything more boring than that’—and we could actually weave that into a story,”Meyer said. “We’re hoping to inspire people to use this medium.”

A boon to corporate eLearning

Podcasts can tell a story, provide factual information, and,through their episodic nature, create continuity. Episodes build on one anotherand give listeners a reason to keep streaming or downloading the content,Marbut said.

Umanskiy agrees that the serial aspect of podcasts providesconsistency in a learning program. “New content could be delivered to youraudience’s mailbox weekly or biweekly. This will not only build a goodrelationship with a podcast host and create the sense of familiarity, but willalso quickly become a habit. Just like checking a Facebook page or a newsfeedfirst thing in the morning, listening to a new episode of a Monday morning (orTuesday night) podcast will easily become your learners’ second nature,” shesaid.

Podcasts differ from most eLearning in significant ways, thefirst being the expectation that each podcast is part of a coherent series. And,to truly be a podcast, there has to be an audio-only option, Marbut said. Manypodcasts do not include video, though they can.

Finally, the crux: “The topic is inherently interesting,”Marbut said. With podcasts, “we’re drawing on the volitional aspectof learning. This is the gospel I try to preach: No one gets learned at,”Marbut said. He finds the idea of a “good non-voluntary podcast”paradoxical. “Being told that you have to listen to it makes it not likea podcast.” Audio-only compulsory eLearning should be called something else, hesaid: a “road show” or “mobile learning show.”

Rather than rename their podcasts, Meyer and D’Anza focus onmaking their required podcasts engaging. Both avid podcast listeners, they aremembers of a five-person training team that creates eLearning for 8,000 NationwideInsurance employees. Around the time that the first season of Serial “putpodcasting back in the spotlight,” they were working on a required course oninsurance policy language.

“Our audience had a lot of, let’s call it ‘windshield time’—it’sbasically time where they are away from their computers,” Meyer said. “So wedecided to create something for them that they could consume while they weredriving.”

D’Anza picks up the thread. “We looked at, ‘How can weutilize that time a little bit better?’ They have to get from point A to pointB. Can we deliver them information and learning while they’re doing that?”Podcasting seemed a natural answer.

Meyer and D’Anza have used podcasts to teach technicalinformation and soft skills; they’ve created fictional stories and told truestories. They have created podcasts as standalone eLearning and incorporated theminto broader programs. “Honestly, I don’t think I would say there’s a type oflearning that you couldn’t make this work for,” D’Anza said. “Stories areuniversal. I don’t think that there’s any sort of information that you can’tconvey in the form of a story. And when you break podcasting down, that’s allit is; you’re just telling stories.”

Style spurs podcast success

Podcasts generally take one of two formats: a host whointerviews guests, or stories around a particular topic.

“I’ve always been a fan of some podcasts, like ThisAmerican Life and Radiolab, that do what I call ‘tent-pole’storytelling. It’s a form of nonlinear storytelling where you have a centraltheme—the tent—and you have supporting stories,” Meyer said. He and D’Anza haveused that approach in some of their projects.

For Nationwide’s course on insurance policy language, D’Anzaand Meyer created a fictional “whodunit” story, which they told in a series ofweekly podcast episodes. Along with virtual classroom sessions and onlinediscussion boards, the 20-minute podcasts became part of weekly training—twohours per week over four weeks. “As the story goes on, more things occur, so wewere able to layer multiple theories and multiple policies into one cohesivestory. We made sure to end each of the four episodes on a cliffhanger, so there’sa point in time where you’re not sure what’s going to happen because you don’thave all the information,” D’Anza said.

A question was posted to the discussion board each weekwhere learners could share their experiences and say what they’d do in a similarsituation. Learners “really got into the discussions—people wrote pages onthis,” Meyer said.

Another project featured veterans, a multilingual customerservice team, and other employees telling personal stories as a way to conveydifferent aspects of “service,” a Nationwide corporate value.

Meyer and D’Anza usually host their own podcasts, but, whentime allows, they “put out a casting call” to recruit colleagues at Nationwideto participate. “We found out that we have a lot of amateur actors that we getto work with as well. That’s always fun—they’re good at what they do,” Meyersaid.

Whatever the podcast style, variety is essential. “Theability to vary and change voices is important in an audio narrative; you don’twant one voice the whole time. That gets boring and you lose interest,” D’Anzasaid.

And participants have to be excited about sharing theirexpertise. “The secret is passion. You need to love what you do, as a host orcreator. Same with your guest—invite someone who’s passionate about the subjectthey will be talking about. It’s all gotta start with a spark!” Umanskiy said.

Getting technical

An appealing aspect of podcasts is their simplicity: It’spossible to create them in-house with minimal overhead. That is the drivingidea behind the session that Meyer and D’Anza will present at DevLearn 2017 inOctober. “With any learning technology, people can get a little scared and say,‘Well, I don’t know how to make a podcast,’” D’Anza said. “But the thing is,most people probably do.”

Podcasting builds on skills we all have, he said: “You knowhow to tell stories; we’ve been listening to and telling stories our wholelife. You’ve probably recorded audio in some form if you’re in the learningtechnologies world. You’ve got the basic tools to do this.” He said a goal fortheir session is “that people will walk out thinking, ‘This is something I cando—and I can do it tomorrow.’”

Meyer and D’Anza use Adobe eLearning tools. “Anyone who hasthat has everything they need,” D’Anza said. “If you want to spend a little bitof money to get a nicer mic, which is something I would probably suggest, ormaybe a little better audio editing software—you can get into this space forunder $200,” he said.

Marbut cautions against recording on a phone or computer,but agrees that a good mic is the most important piece of equipment; he favorsa lavalier mic. “Unless your microphone cost less than $15, it can produce adecent podcast.” He said several times not to “get hung up on” equipment, butalso to get a quality wireless mic. “You can’t skimp on a wireless mic; you can’tget the cheap ones. They will cut out and cause all kinds of problems.”

To create professional-sounding audio, Marbut recommends learninga little bit about audio engineering and understanding your equipment. “It’snot about having a nice microphone; it’s about knowing what you have,” he said.He favors using a dedicated audio recorder with XLR connections to the mic. Thedifference in audio quality is very noticeable, he said, with an XLR connection,versus the headphone jack or USB connector typically used with a computer or camera.It has to do with the amount of noise that gets recorded along with the person’svoice. Editing to reduce the noise also reduces the quality of the audio you dowant. “The only way to take away the noise is to also take away the signal,so you end up with what sounds like low-bit-rate audio,” Marbut said. “Itsounds like a bad cellphone connection.”

Novices need to learn a little bit about signal-to-noiseratio and setting up equipment for production, Marbut said, and ways to manuallyimprove the sound quality and range in postproduction. “I know it soundscomplicated, but this is three or four hours in a workshop—maybe less,” hesaid.

Consider adding video

Podcasts can include video, though this is optional.

Adding video, even if only in promotional materials,provides “a visual reference for the host and maybe the guest,” Marbut said. “Weadd more value than we would ever expect just by having a video version of thepodcast. It can just be a short clip of the host. … Maybe it’s just a videowith the person sitting there with a microphone and headphones, and they say, ‘Hey,why don’t you check out our podcast?’”

But, considering their audience—insurance agents, using “windshieldtime”—Meyer and D’Anza would need a compelling reason to add video. “If there’sa way that I’m using video to illustrate topics that are being talked about orto provide important visuals that you need to go along with the story, then absolutely,I think that can be helpful,” D’Anza said. “It’s really just understanding youraudience: where they are going to consume these lessons and what best gets tothem. The example of our folks in the car? We don’t want them watching video!”

For their insurance whodunit, Meyer and D’Anza addedvisuals—photos of the characters, documents that added to the story, such aspolice reports and diagrams—because the virtual classroom provided theopportunity to enrich the experience in that way. “You don’t have to have thatfor it to be successful,” D’Anza said. “It can exist just as the audio.”

Results

Meyer and D’Anza were pleasantly surprised by their initialpodcasts’ reception. “When you’re presenting a new medium—or any newtechnology—you can get pushback, but we actually got overwhelmingly positiveresponses. People were surprised that they could just listen to a radio show astheir training and not have to go through PowerPoint after PowerPoint,” Meyersaid. “People were happy overall that there was a fresh way of doing this—andthat they didn’t necessarily have to spend time outside of their normal job.”

D’Anza said it comes down to learner autonomy; the team got “alot of very positive feedback” about allowing people to set their own pace andchoose when and where to do the eLearning. “If you allow a learner to controltheir learning, they’re going to be more engaged in the process,” he said. “They’regoing to pay more attention; they’re going to learn more; they’re going toretain more.”

Learn more

Several sessions at DevLearn 2017 Conference & Expo, October 25 – 27 in Las Vegas, will addresspodcasting in eLearning. Register now to attend Hanna Umanskiy’s pre-conferenceBYOL (Bring Your Own Laptop®) workshop, “Creating eLearning Podcasts from Scratch,” or DevLearn sessions presented by Ty Marbut, by Jeffrey D’Anza and Joseph Meyer, and by other industry leaders.