“I want to try something creative, but I don’t know where to start!” That’s a pretty common refrain when Harvard College students first embark on the final project for Faculty Director Sue J. Goldie’s General Education course, World Health: Challenges and Opportunities. At the end of the course, students are charged with analyzing a societal health challenge they are passionate about and with creating a “real world” product to influence policy or motivate a change in thinking or behavior. In the past, this has looked like anything from an original dance on maternal health to a children’s book on anxiety.
The product is purposefully broad, to encourage students to explore their own global health interests while also while thinking outside the box. For some students, this is both empowering and daunting—empowering to bring to life a passion, but perhaps daunting to tackle it creatively. To meet this need, Nina Bhattacharya, GHELI’s Instructional Design Specialist, led a series of virtual workshops on making podcasts and video to demystify some of the options for creative making.
“It’s an absolute myth that fancy equipment is required to produce a podcast or video,” Nina explained during the sessions. She introduced some of her favorite free tools, like Anchor (audio) and Splice (video), and modeled how students could create their own home studio with objects around the house. In addition to walking through the technical aspects of using the tools, Nina shared some engaging examples—from narrative podcasts to GIFs about social distancing—to spark student thinking. The session wrapped up with an informal dialogue to address student questions.
Take a look at Nina’s slides and learn more about the Incubator’s studios, where staff and students collaborate on new multimodal instructional strategies.