Contemporary students often create fluid and variable self-identities through social media. But the internet can also be used to share one’s fundamentals beliefs and discover the same about others. Using NPR’s This I Believe podcast as a model, students in my Popular Culture Research Writing classes compose a brief essay that identifies and explains one of their core personal values. They then create a podcast of the essay to share with classmates, who then respond in written comments. This creating and responding to the podcasts facilitates discussion about identity construction through both written and verbal forms. Conducting this exploration online also provides more distance than traditional in-class presentations, which lets students control their rhetorical representation in new ways.
This presentation will illustrate a pedagogical technique that allows students the opportunity to explore and share self-identity in a familiar locale, the internet, while also learning about a less familiar format for written work, podcasting.
About the presenterMaureen McVeigh Trainor
Maureen McVeigh Trainor teaches Composition, Creative Writing, and Popular Culture Research Writing at West Chester University.