Who gets to imagine themselves as a professional—and what parts of themselves can enter that imagined future? Higher education asks students to build a professional identity: a sense of who they are becoming in a work-related role. The challenge is connecting that emerging identity with other social identities, including cultural and gender identity, rather than treating them as separate. Educational podcasting offers a flexible, brief way to place personal experiences and perspectives within the curriculum. The ReSearching Identity Podcast Project used podcasts to help students learn from the experiences of fellow students and professionals, including marginalized experiences, while keeping the intervention embedded in coursework [1]. This raises a larger question for podcast researchers: can an inclusive audio lesson do more than deliver course content? Can it help students recognize, connect, and develop the professional selves they are becoming?
Against this backdrop, podcasting entered higher education in several roles. It could substitute for a lecture by recording material for later review, supplement teaching with study guides or summaries, or invite more creative uses, although student-generated podcasts were the least common of these approaches [2]. Lecture recordings were used chiefly for revision and assessment preparation; one evaluation also cautioned that they might not facilitate mobile learning as much as expected [8].
The medium was nevertheless attractive for flexible education because it was described as simple, inexpensive, accessible, portable, and easy to produce. Its informal, talkback-radio style was used to address students’ pre-class worries and clarify concerns about assessment and course expectations [4][6]. For distance learners, short audio discussions were intended to reduce anxiety associated with isolation and foster inclusivity, while also reinforcing learning and guiding study [7]. Here, portability means that learners can move audio to a player and listen at a convenient time and place [9].
These benefits do not produce a single recipe for educational podcasting. Research questioned assumptions about an ideal length, teaching style, or position within a learning experience, arguing instead for designs suited to particular contexts . Nor was creative participation the norm: much earlier work remained instructor-delivered content . Learner-generated podcasts offered a more participatory alternative. In paired assessment, students perceived them as authentic, enjoyable, creative, and useful for communication, with opportunities for peer review and community building . Other work linked collaborative podcast creation with reflection, perspective-taking—considering others’ views—and negotiating shared meaning . Yet these applications generally centred on learning disciplinary content or completing assessment, leaving professional identity and inclusion as further design questions.