Developing creativity, soft skills and skills for life through international podcasting

KALLUS, Hana and Kateřina CHUDOVÁ. Developing creativity, soft skills and skills for life through international podcasting. 2021.

Basic information

• Original name: Developing creativity, soft skills and skills for life through international podcasting
• Name (in English): Developing creativity, soft skills and skills for life through international podcasting
• Authors: KALLUS, Hana and Kateřina CHUDOVÁ.
• Edition: 2021.

Other information

• Type of outcome: Chapter(s) of a specialized book
• Confidentiality degree: is not subject to a state or trade secret
• Keywords in English: Podcasting, life and soft skills, internationalization, creativity, blended learning, blending technology
• Tags: International impact, Reviewed

Abstract

In today´s world full of challenges caused not only by the pandemic, we strongly believe that teaching should go beyond the syllabus and focus also on life skills, providing students with space for creativity, investigation and learning their own way. In this paper we share our hands-on experience with podcasting in an international environment. We describe the whole process of the international cooperation with our Polish colleagues from Toruń University without any project support. First, we describe the background, describe the collaboration from the teachers´ point of view, i.e., what communication channels we tested with students and what guidance and support we provided. Then, we share a summary of students´ feedback on the whole process as well as some of the results. The students were well aware that not only the product – a podcast on a legal topic - but also the journey towards it was a valuable learning experience. They had a real-life opportunity to experience how hard it may be to set up an international team, what a challenge it could be to manage the time, they had to use English as a tool to negotiate, justify opinions, research a topic, reach an agreement, and convey a message using the right register, vocabulary and structure. Most importantly, they had to work autonomously, take responsibility for individual steps in the project, and thus improve valuable life skills. Given the limited space, we will attempt to make a useful list/guideline which may help other colleagues.