Politics Show on Junction11 Radio

By edwardwhite Comment Closed

Dr Alan Renwick, School of Politics, Economics and International Relations
Year of activity: 2014/15

Overview

DSC_0289 - CopyOur Teaching and Learning Development Fund (TLDF) award was used to fund the purchase of a laptop and recording equipment to help students in preparing materials for broadcast in the Politics Show on Junction11 Radio, the Reading University Students’ Union radio station. This facilitated learning activities that greatly boosted students’ self-confidence, engagement with politics, and transferable skills.

Objectives

  • Deepen students’ engagement with politics by creating a forum for them to discuss it on live radio.
  • Deepen students’ understanding of the role of media in politics through practice as well as academic learning.
  • Foster students’ self-confidence and their skills of research, communication, presentation, and audio editing.

Context

The hardest part in studying politics is often connecting what we learn through academic study with what is happening around the world today. The Politics Show and allied Media and Politics module are designed to facilitate that, as well as to foster a range of crucial transferable skills. The ability to record and edit material ahead of broadcast is essential, and our TLDF funding allows that.

Implementation

The Politics Show was broadcast every Tuesday evening during term throughout the year, between 7 and 8pm. Much of the show involves live studio conversation, but pre-recording some content allows us greatly to open up the range of material that we can include, and most shows have therefore involved at least some such content. We have, for example, included vox pops hearing the views of students around campus, recorded interviews with notable visitors to campus, recorded interviews away from campus with a range of political figures, and recorded material on location, including reviews of exhibitions at the British Museum and British Library. While most such material can now be recorded with a good quality smart phone, the equipment we were able to purchase through the TLDF gives the highest quality of recorded sound and ensures that all students have access to the means of recording and editing, even if they do not own the requisite equipment themselves.

Impact

The Politics Show has been a tremendous success: students who take part visibly grow in confidence and ability to communicate and in engagement with politics. In addition, anyone with access to a computer can listen to the show live or through our podcast edition, and many people do so, ensuring that the show helps advertise the University of Reading and the Department of Politics and International Relations – and the achievements and professionalism of our students – to the wider world. The show is a core element in the package that we promote to applicants during open days and visit days. Again, these opportunities require that the show’s quality be high, and our TLDF funding has helped ensure that.

Reflections

We regard the Politics Show and the associated Media and Politics module as a very clear success, which is due in large part to the energy that this activity has unleashed among our students. We plan some tweaks to aspects of the module that are not related to our TLDF funding in response to lessons learnt over the past year. But we see no reason for substantial changes to the Politics Show itself or the role of pre-recorded material in it. Our one frustration this year was that, for administrative reasons, we could not purchase our new equipment until late in the year, but we will be able to integrate it more fully into the show more continuously in 2015/16.

The show’s original host, Dr Alan Renwick, has now moved on from the University of Reading, and two new hosts – Dr Dawn Clarke and Dr Mark Shanahan – will therefore be taking over. Given that they will be new to this kind of activity, we do not plan to experiment much with innovations over the coming year, but further refinement and evolution of the format may take place thereafter.

Links

The archive of podcasts from the show is available here: http://www.reading.ac.uk/spirs/about/spirs-PoliticsShowPodcasts.aspx

Using technology to find low-tech solutions by Mary Morrissey

By edwardwhite Comment Closed

Like a lot of people, I do not consider myself particularly savvy about technology: when I find that something is useful to me, I learn how to use it. That said, I think we can use learning technologies to come up with ‘low tech’ solutions to our teaching needs. Among the advantage is efficiency in terms of time and money: we already have the kit, and we know how to use it. I offer the following as an example.

It is often difficult to make sure that students are aware of detailed regulations that affect their work but which cannot be summarised or displayed easily. Conventions for writing and referencing are a good example in our department.  Last summer, Pat Ferguson (our Royal Literary Fund fellow whose role in the department is to help student improve their writing skills) observed that we had excellent advice on essay writing, but it was in our large Student Handbook, distributed at the start of the first year. Pat suggested that we make this information available separately.

I thought this was a great idea. I noticed there was other information in the handbook that students need through their degree too: there was information about our marking criteria; there were some very helpful examples that showed the difference between plagiarism and poor academic practice. I took these sections, and I created three separate documents with titles that I hoped would be self-explanatory: ‘Style Guide for English Literature students’; ‘Understanding Feedback – Marking Criteria’; and ‘Plagiarism’.

I uploaded all three documents to Blackboard’s ‘Fileshare’ area for the department, and I created links from the Blackboard courses for all our Part 1 and Part 2 modules. (I am working on the Part 3 modules, but there are over 50 of those!) I also posted the documents in our central ‘Information for English Literature Students’ Blackboard organisation, on which all staff, undergraduates and postgraduate students are enrolled. By keeping the documents in ‘Fileshare’ I can update them every year, to include new ‘standard paragraphs’ for example. I overwrite the old file with the newer version, and all the daughter versions linked to it update automatically.

This isn’t rocket science, but I think it has helped us make useful information more readily available. Having in posted in most of our Blackboard courses makes it more visible; having three small documents (in pdf format) makes them easier to download and print.

Where would I go from here? Students have told me that they like a website with exercises that help with grammar and writing skills that we recommended. It’s based in the University of Bristol:  http://www.bristol.ac.uk/arts/exercises/grammar/grammar_tutorial/index.htm

I would like to create an interactive resource like this, and I know it can be done. The University of Aberdeen took the paper-based ‘Guide to Written Work’ (on which we all relied when I worked there!) and turned it into an internet-based resource with exercises: http://www.abdn.ac.uk/writing/

If anyone knows any low-tech ways that I could do something similar, please let me know!