2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Developing a Podcasting Platform to Support Engineering Education

Learners of all ages are managing consistently growing knowledge bases and sources of information. The Web 2.0 era has brought new creative solutions to these challenges, including podcasts. At scale, podcasts can create social connection among listeners. Social connection among instructors has long been recognized as an important factor of professional development, leading to improved teaching. For students, social connections also support student academic success and sense of belonging in engineering. An opportunity exists for engineers to create value for both faculty and students in disseminating research-based pedagogical best practices and technical engineering content through audio storytelling in the form of podcasts.

Podcasts are still an emerging medium for engineering education, but there exists a rich history of use to learn from in other disciplines. Podcasts have become an increasingly utilized tool in medical education and have been evaluated for their professional development value in teaching. Some preliminary studies have been conducted for engineering students for English language learners and to increase motivation for technical content. Educational podcast audiences report that personal anecdotes and humor enhance the educational experience. We believe the same opportunity exists in engineering to add personal context to technical engineering material for students and “between the lines” anecdotes for faculty seeking to learn from colleagues in shorter and more personal ways to supplement traditional scholarly articles.

This paper details our effort to create a podcasting toolkit, assessment strategy, and episodes that engineering teaching faculty, researchers, and students can use to share their work with colleagues within a college of engineering and in other colleges on campus and beyond. We will describe the multidisciplinary team that was assembled to conduct this work including engineering and journalism faculty, experts in assessment, and education podcast producers. We will present the podcasting toolkit that was assembled to lower the barrier of entry for faculty to use podcasting in their courses and research. We believe that podcasts have the potential to impact the listeners’ curiosity and connections with each other and materials. After listening to a podcast episode, we anticipate that listeners will become more curious about the topic discussed during the podcast episode. They will also make connections between the content and participants of the podcast and their own existing knowledge, actions, and networks which, in turn, can lead to building more value in what they do. We share practical strategies for an engineering podcast with the goal of empowering more engineering faculty to explore this emerging communication medium.

Authors

Prof. Holly M Golecki http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3691-0420 University of Illinois at Urbana - Champaign [biography]

Dr. Holly Golecki (she/her) is a Teaching Assistant Professor in Bioengineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. She holds an appointment at the Carle-Illinois College of Medicine in the Department of Biomedical and Translational Sciences. She is also a core faculty member at the Institute for Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Access in the College of Engineering. Holly studies biomaterials and soft robotics and their applications in the university classroom, in undergraduate research and in engaging K12 students in STEM. Holly received her BS/MS in Materials Science and Engineering from Drexel University and her PhD in Engineering Sciences from Harvard University.
Wayne L Chang University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign [biography]

Dr. Wayne Chang is an assistant teaching professor in the Aerospace Engineering Department at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He received his BS, MS, and Ph.D. in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering from the University of California, Irvine.
Dr. Ashleigh Wright University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign [biography]

Ashleigh R. Wright, PhD is the Associate Director of the Institute for Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Access and Assistant Teaching Professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at the Grainger College of Engineering. She is responsible for collaborating with college and departmental leaders and stakeholders to identify needs and priorities, developing and implementing evidence-based strategies, and measuring progress and effectiveness quantitatively against key metrics that promote diversity, equity, inclusion, and access to the undergraduate and graduate student communities. She also conducts research that analyzes trends, driving factors, barriers, and best practices to educate others and support organizational improvement.
Prior to joining the University, Ashleigh managed and directed many training and pathway programs that support students from underrepresented backgrounds in STEM, and facilitated workshops that enhance the academic, personal, and professional development of students at North Carolina State University and Louisiana State University. She is a member of the National Organization for the Professional Advancement of Black Chemists and Chemical Engineers (NOBCChE) and Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc. She holds degrees in chemistry from Wofford College (B.S.), North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University (M.S.), and Louisiana State University (Ph.D.).
Mr. Saadeddine Shehab University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign [biography]

I am currently the Associate Director of Assessment and Research team at the Siebel Center for Design (SCD) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. I work with a group of wonderful and talented people at SCD’s Assessment and Research Laboratory to conduct research that informs and evaluates our practice of teaching and learning human-centered design in formal and informal learning environments.

My Research focuses on studying students’ collaborative problem solving processes and the role of the teacher in facilitating these processes in STEM classrooms.
Dr. Blake Everett Johnson University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign [biography]

Dr. Blake Everett Johnson is a Teaching Associate Professor and instructional laboratory manager in the Department of Mechanical Science and Engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. His research interests include experimental fluid mechanics, measurement science, engineering education, engineering leadership, and professional identity development.
Prof. Ramez Hajj University of Illinois at Urbana - Champaign
Colleen King University of Illinois at Urbana - Champaign [biography]

Colleen King is a clinical assistant professor of journalism at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, where she also serves as inaugural director of the Frank Center for Leadership and Innovation in Media. Prior to her time in academia, King was a television news producer, most recently serving as executive producer for "The 11th Hour with Brian Williams" on MSNBC.
Piper Marie Pascarella University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Lucy Hamilton Cinnamon University of Illinois at Urbana - Champaign

Note

The full paper will be available to logged in and registered conference attendees once the conference starts on June 22, 2025, and to all visitors after the conference ends on June 25, 2025