A course built to be COVID-resistant

While most classes were forced to make a transition to virtual learning during the COVID-19 pandemic, one class was built for online delivery from the start. Amanda Cupido took the reins of JN8407/JRN801 (Advanced Podcast & Radio Documentary) with the explicit goal of creating a remote class that could provide a complete and fulfilling learning experience.

Using her past experiences teaching a similar course at Seneca College, Cupido (herself an RSJ alum) was brought in during the spring semester of 2020—near the start of the COVID-19 lockdowns—to develop the course. 

“I do think [audio] is one of the mediums that’s most well suited for this type of world,” Cupido said. “And this explains why there has been an increase in podcast listenership and podcast production over the last year.”

With remote learning in mind, the class was designed from the ground up to ensure that students’ needs were being met.

“You don’t know where students are at when they’re tuning in remotely,” Cupido said. “And so right off the bat, no matter what course you’re teaching, that’s something that has to really drive how you approach building a course.”

Built for virtual

The entire class is structured around a final podcast series, created by the students—myself included. As a cohort, we selected a team of executive producers, a host for the series, and then settled on an overarching theme to connect all the individual episodes. In the 2021 Winter semester, we chose the theme of “Hot Takes.”

Fleshing out the curriculum are continuous lessons about audio techniques, like how to properly use voice or advanced editing techniques. The class listens to clips from podcasts curated by Cupido and by the Master of Journalism students, which demonstrate these strategies in action.

Even for something as simple as listening materials, Cupido had to be aware that some students could be in noisy environments. As such, she needed to figure out what worked best for students by surveying whether students wanted to listen together, on their own, or half and half.

“We do a portion of it synchronously, so all together, and a portion asynchronous, where students can go off and do it in their own time,” said Cupido.

While Cupido was confident in the course’s remote set-up, her biggest concern coming into the year was that students might lack buy-in on the stories they were telling. She felt that meeting sources face-to-face helped build engagement, which may otherwise be rare because of  pandemic restrictions.

“One of my roles as an instructor is to really make sure that students feel empowered to tell their story properly, to pick a story that they truly care about and help them find a way to get that emotional connection,” Cupido said. “To feel like they are still doing the story justice.”

Nonetheless, Cupido still expects an end result that students can be proud to call their own. Technical limitations—the other foreseeable barriers to high quality podcasts—were addressed from the onset. Zoom H1 recording microphones were sent individually to students. Angela Glover, a production specialist in audio and radio at Ryerson, made herself available whenever students needed her assistance.

“I’m not expecting the quality of the stories from my class to be any lower than one of the students who took this class in the classroom,” Cupido said.

Going public

Part of the appeal of “Advanced Podcast,” is the opportunity to create a podcast series that will actually go out into the world. The series from the Fall 2020 semester, entitled “Same Difference”, started to go live on Spotify on Jan. 21. Since then, the class’ executive producer, Emily Morantz, released all 19 episodes sequentially.

For the Winter 2021 semester, our own executive producer, Jael Joseph, is in the midst of navigating through the production of the series. She, along with the rest of the executive team, was given the opportunity to work with a professional musician and graphic artist to help package the series ahead of its release.

 “All in all, I was pleasantly appreciative of the course,” said Joseph. “If you had to ask me to pick between virtual and in-class for this specific course, I had a really good experience with virtual so I would choose that. I didn’t feel like I lost out on the in-person class.”

Joseph, a fourth-year undergraduate who had previously taken a beginner radio documentary class, was looking to double-down on the technical aspects of audio production, as well as going for a more professional, career-oriented learning experience. She was initially reticent to take on the role of executive producer.

“I felt, to some extent, that I have a lot on my plate,” said Joseph. “But then I thought about it. The reason you’re taking an advanced podcasting class is to strengthen what you already know. And I thought, ‘Why not put your name on something that you worked with a team of people to produce, to show that you’ve grown?’”

The Winter 2021 podcast series, “This Could Change Your Mind,” is slated to go live in the spring.