On Friday, Feb. 17, Carroll College’s podcast Big Sky, Small World kicked off with the publication of its first episode. Bringing in information about Carroll life, sports, news, and insight from Carroll Alumni members, the podcast will drop an episode every Friday morning.
The goal of the podcast is to spread Carroll’s news to a wider audience and grow the Carroll community.
The students involved in the Podcast are in CO 189, “Podcast Production” course. This is the first semester of the course. It will be taught every semester. It’s a one-credit course where the focus is producing episodes of the student podcast, Big Sky, Small World. Alan Hansen is the head of operations on the podcast along with being the professor of the course.
One podcast member, Thayne Harrison, a senior business major from St. George, Utah, gave his insight on his experience so far with the course.
“This class is very different from my other courses,” said Harrison. “Instead of just learning about the essential needs of a podcast, we are actually forced to be a part of it and learn on the go.”
Hansen has a different approach to teaching publishing, using more of an experience-based course. Although he meets with students once a week, students gain hands-on learning by creating segments of their choice. No experience is required.
“The goal is to give students hands-on learning experience along with active participation. This includes a log of editing hours and recording hours,” said Hansen.
The problem that troubles this production team is marketing. Getting students to tune in to their podcast is difficult. Potential solutions to this are to bring in content, build up social media awareness, and network out with Carroll and its alumni.
They’re also creating an Instagram account called “Big.Sky.Small.World.” to gain publicity.
Hansen looks to start working closely with Carroll’s marketing team. Starting with adding the podcast Instagram account to Carroll’s page.
The goal is to build awareness through social media.
Through this account, they post featuring segments, audience feedback, polls, and more news about the podcast. Along with a special segment having a guest every episode, the production team hopes to gain new listeners and grow the podcast.
