From proposal to podcast: Starting a student-driven pharmacy podcast in the classroom

Podcasts are a widely available and popular educational medium for healthcare providers, residents, students, and patients. Podcasts are convenient, accessible, and may be effective education tools for listeners. While some studies have attempted to measure the effectiveness of podcasting to enhance knowledge, there are few studies evaluating podcasts in pharmacy education. The purpose of this project was to provide students with the opportunity to create a podcast episode through an in-class, semester-long assignment and to evaluate student perceptions of knowledge, confidence, and professional identity.

Over the course of a semester-long elective class, students worked in groups to develop a 10-min podcast episode on an infectious diseases topic. Students were tasked with creating, recording, and editing content for individual episodes. The podcast episodes were evaluated on accuracy, summary and impact of clinical studies, and production quality. At the end of the semester, a podcast was launched on publicly available platforms and the student podcast episodes were made available for listening.

At the conclusion of the semester, students were surveyed on perceived anxiety, confidence, knowledge, and support surrounding the podcast project. Students indicated a notable increase in confidence and knowledge after completing the podcast project. All students were proud of the podcast episode they created and most indicated plans to listen to and share these podcast episodes with others.

The creation of a semester-long, student-driven class podcast project is feasible and promotes learning and engagement. Students reported increased confidence, knowledge, and professional pride after completing their podcast episodes.