Student Listening Preferences and the Use of Storytelling to Teach About Community Resources

Abstract

BackgroundRehabilitation Counseling programs often require that the curriculum include education about basic community resource and entitlement programs for people with disabilities. The fact-based nature of this content can make it challenging for students to engage with in a meaningful way, especially in the online learning environment. Storytelling holds promise as a means to bring this content to life in online courses; however, little is known about how students interact with digital storytelling assignments.ObjectivePodcasts may be a more convenient way to deliver the audio to the students, as use of the technology as well as overall smartphone usage has exploded in recent years.MethodsThis article examines the results a survey of 44 students who reported their listening preferences for a weekly storytelling assignment.FindingsResults confirm previous findings in the literature about how students interact with academic podcasts.ConclusionsDespite their proliferation, students appear to approach podcast assignments similarly to how they would any other online learning task.