Campus News

Great Falls College podcast offers tips and tricks to become a better educator

Great Falls College MSU's Wayne Breau and Becky Sullivan, along with Mandy Wright, started the "Two-Year Teaching and Tech" podcast as a way to provide educators with some tips and tricks in an easy-to-use format. The second episode drops on July 2.

GREAT FALLS, Mont. – Becky Sullivan, Mandy Wright and Wayne Breau say they are just three friends having a conversation.

Oh, and recording that conversation and publishing it.

The three Great Falls College MSU faculty and staff members started a podcast, ""Two-year teaching and tech," they are producing twice a month as another means to spread knowledge about teaching in an easy-to-use and accessible format.

Mandy Wright is the director of assessment and faculty development and an English faculty member at Great Falls College and Becky Sullivan is the instructional designer at the college. Wright and Sullivan run the Teaching and Learning Center for Great Falls College.

Breau is the eLearning instructional technology specialist in the Technical Assistance Center.

It is impossible to schedule workshops that everyone can attend, and one-on-one meetings are not possible with every instructor, so Sullivan, Wright and Breau hatched the plan to do a podcast.

"We hope to use the podcast as a way to bridge the gap between workshops and individualized support; not everyone is able or interested in attending a workshop," Wright said. "But it is easy to listen to a podcast in the car, on a walk or doing other activities, so it is another medium for us to offer information and support."

The first podcast, "The one about captioning," dropped on June 22 and the second episode, "The one about our jobs," will be available on Thursday, July 2.

"We'll be talking about what instructional designers and instructional technologists do, and how their roles are different but complementary," Wright said.

Breau hopes the podcast helps the college community better understand the tools available.
"My hope for the Technology Assistance Center is that through this podcast we can help instructors and administrators realize some things that we consider when researching educational technology tools and also some of the different ways in which they can be used," he said.

The three are meeting on WebEx and recording their discussions.

"We are trying a new recording and transcription service with our second episode and hope it will help with editing and distributing the podcast more quickly," Breau said.

Even though the podcast is in its infancy, it already has been rewarding, Wright said.

"Being involved in a creative and fun project with great people is definitely the best part," she said. "It is also a new learning experience, as only Wayne has ever been involved in podcasting, so this has been an opportunity to begin building a new skillset."

While the podcast is aimed at Great Falls College instructors, Wright said the information should be applicable to all educators.

The trailer and first episode are available now on your favorite app or at https://anchor.fm/2yrTT. The second episode will be available on July 2.

"We are three friends who enjoy discussing the subjects we are passionate about, and this is a fun way to add additional purpose to those discussions," Breau said.

Contact:

Scott Thompson | Director of communications and marketing
Scott.thompson@gfcmsu.edu
O: 406-771-4314
C: 406-750-0982