Major and Career Exploration in Podcasting & Storytelling (CPBL 102/FNDS 102)
This is a practice-based learning course. Practice-Based Learning (PBL) focuses on applying what is being learned and learning by doing. In this course, students will work in teams to address an applied problem within the theme of Storytelling: Arts, Media, and Culture.
Course Project:
Telling Your Story to the World: What does it take to become a successful Podcaster?
This course centers around systematically evaluating the characteristics of successful podcasters and creating original content that follows best practices. After examining a variety of effective examples, students will consider how they would personally define their success as a podcaster (e.g., listen counts, subscribers, advertising dollars), and determine the type of content (e.g., humor, instructional, inspirational, educational, children’s entertainment) they would provide. They will script an engaging story about themselves and their content, and write a summary of the types of listeners they intend to attract. Next, students will develop a podcast to introduce their vision (a "teaser" episode). The final project will be the first full episode of their podcast.
This class will not focus on advanced editing techniques, but will instead cover the basics of producing and marketing a podcast, as well as the impact of podcasts on society, the pros and cons of making your own content, and common elements between the most successful content.
Instructors from Journalism and Media Production (JuMP) and Communication will teach this course.
More about this course
This course takes an interdisciplinary approach. This means that you will be exposed to perspectives from multiple academic areas. A major goal of the course is to help students explore different majors and careers and to develop connections in the College of Arts, Sciences, and Letters and across campus.
Course number: CPBL 102
Number of Credits: 4
Search UM-Dearborn Class Schedule to find out more.
Dearborn Discovery Core requirements met: Critical and Creative Thinking
Meet your faculty members: Tim Kiska, Professor of Communication and Margaret Murray, Assistant Professor of Communication
One of the benefits of taking a Practice-Based Learning course is gaining faculty mentors that can support you throughout your college career. Get to know Tim Kiska and Margaret Murray, faculty members for Major and Career Exploration in Storytelling: Arts, Media, and Culture.
Tim Kiska is the executive producer of The Detroit History Podcast, which has enjoyed more than 150,000 unique downloads in 30 countries. The podcast earned the Historical Society of Michigan's "best media" award in 2020, and has been featured in the Detroit Free Press, Deadline Detroit, and other places.
Kiska is a veteran journalist who has taught at the University of Michigan-Dearborn after more than 30 years at Detroit's newspapers. And he listens, a lot, to podcasts too numerous to list.
Have questions about this course? Email Prof. Kiska.
Margaret Murray, Ph.D. listens to podcasts, has been a guest on other people's podcasts, and hosted a podcast for a capstone class during the pandemic. She also watches too much YouTube. She teaches classes on social media and why some content goes viral while others get lost in the noise.
In her spare time she tries to keep up with her two daughters, sees live music, and succumbs to her Twitter addiction.
Have questions about this course? Email Prof. Murray.