Exploring Resident Motivation with a Podcast Creation Activity: A Qualitative Study

As the field of digital education expands, it is important to understand the benefit to the creator of such resources as well as the user. This study sought to understand the resident's experience with writing a medical podcast script in contrast to creating lecture-based teaching presentations. We aimed to explore the motivation behind the resident's voluntary participation and provide an example and framework to residency programs looking to enhance their resident as teacher curricula with the use of digital education.

Using constructivist grounded theory, residents who completed a podcast script for "The Intern at Work," a learner-generated podcast series, were recruited to partake. Focus groups were recorded, transcribed, and coded iteratively with the use of constant comparison until theoretical sufficiency was achieved.

Residents (n = 12) described three key factors of the podcast development activity that fostered learner motivation: (1) Driving Interest: residents were excited to use a novel outlet to teach; (2) Self-Directed Process: residents appreciated the opportunity for collaboration and flexibility; (3) Appreciable Benefit: residents identified several self-gains.

Our findings provide an example of an innovative teaching activity that intrinsically motivated residents. Such information has the potential to inform program leaders on how to foster resident motivation to teach.