The full package: teaching radio in a post-broadcast age.
This paper uses an auto-ethnographic approach to examine the scholarship, and relevance, of teaching broadcast radio techniques to a digitally native, post-covid-online-learning, Gen Z cohort.
During the Covid-19 pandemic a popular radio journalism module was paused and the online documents lost as the Virtual Learning Environment migrated to a new system. Although a version ran this year it hasn’t had the same success as previous iterations. Marks tended to be very high or very low depending on levels of attendance, student feedback was mixed whereas it typically achieves 100% satisfaction, and academics felt conflicted.
On paper, the module was cohesive and well-scaffolded to take second and third year students through a journey of discovery, making and reflection. The pedagogy was well-tested and the level appropriate. It drew on academic literature of teaching and learning and discipline and industry-specific benchmarks research and practice.
Yet discomfort over the chasm between the high and low grades remained for two distinct reasons that this presentation explores 1) In our pandemic-response pedagogy have we set expectations that engagement solely with the online module content is enough to succeed? 2) as undergraduates continue the generational trend away from broadcast radio consumption, for how much longer should we teach it?
Our research explores the validity and appeal in teaching and learning about broadcast radio. Gen Z can be digital natives but lack digital competence and the perceived simplicity of radio recording equipment enables experimentation. The democratisation of access to recording/editing devices and platforms can be enabling and wonderful, but difficult to navigate and makes shared reference points a challenge for educators. With radio, specifically radio journalism, there are more concrete quality thresholds and conventions to provide a framework from which to teach recording, editing, presentation, creativity, story-telling.
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Katy McDonald is Associate Dean Education, and Senior Lecturer in Journalism for 17 years. She worked in commercial radio journalism before moving to academia where her research interests are around newsroom practice and hubbing, radio and journalism education, and scholarship of teaching and learning.
Sarah Drummond is a lecturer in multimedia journalism with a passion for radio. She was a BBC broadcast leader/editor for 23 years; a former managing editor of BBC Radio stations Newcastle and York.
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