San Diego State University is expanding its use of podcasting, with students and faculty increasingly turning to the medium for class assignments and their own shows.
The university library’s Digital Humanities Center now operates five professional-grade podcast studios for students, faculty and staff. Recording sessions jumped from 96 during the 2022-23 academic year to 662 last year.
Ricky Pope, an SDSU faculty scholar and licensed psychologist, is among those who have taken to the microphone. He started the “Homebase Podcast” in fall 2024 as another way to reach students, particularly commuters who may spend less time participating in campus life.
Pope brings students and campus organizations onto the podcast to discuss their experiences, challenges, and resources available at SDSU.
“I really wanted to bring other students on campus and to kind of get a voice of their experience,” Pope said.
Podcasting has also moved deeper into the classroom. Nearly 40 programs across eight colleges now incorporate it, with students recording projects in subjects ranging from Spanish to journalism, media studies and theater.
Professor Noah Arceneaux turned to podcasting in his media law and ethics course after looking for a different way for students to demonstrate their understanding of the material
“I really just wanted the students to do something to flex their creative muscles and to give them a different opportunity to express themselves differently,” Arceneaux said.
Pamella Lach, director of the Digital Humanities Center [DHC], said instructors assign podcasts for different reasons. Some want students to experiment with more creative assignments or learn to communicate with a public audience, while others see podcasting as a way to discourage overreliance on generative AI.
The assignments still require many of the fundamentals of a traditional paper. Students research a subject, organize their ideas and demonstrate what they have learned, but they also have to think about how their writing sounds when spoken aloud.
Concerns about AI played a role in Arceneaux’s decision to work with Lach to develop the podcast assignment for his JMS 494 media law and ethics course. Arceneaux said he grew frustrated after reading papers he believed were largely machine-written, with minimal student input.
He acknowledged that podcasting does not eliminate AI use. Students can still use it for research or to help write a script, but recording the final product adds another layer of participation.
“I nonetheless thought that doing this assignment would force them to apply more human effort than they might otherwise do,” Arceneaux said.
Patrick Flanigan, the center’s programs and operations specialist, has watched podcast assignments spread across disciplines.
Spanish professors send students to the studios to record conversations that demonstrate their language skills. Journalism, media studies and theater students also use the space for class projects.
Flanigan said speaking about a subject gives students another way to demonstrate their understanding of the material.
“You have to know it,” Flanigan said. “You can’t just fake it.”
Students do not always arrive with podcasting experience, however.
Digital Humanities Center employees help them set recording levels, get comfortable hearing their own voices through headphones, and learn how to use editing software. Staff members teach students how to produce their projects rather than doing the work for them.
Flanigan said some students return to the studios after completing their assignments. One student chose podcasting for a Digital Humanities class, later started a podcast about her band and eventually became an employee at the center.
Tyler Granger, a civil engineering student in his second year working at the [Digital Humanities Center], had never used its podcast studios before taking the job.
Now, Granger helps other students prepare to record and participates in “Chat DHC,” a podcast featuring the center’s student employees.
He said studio bookings typically start slowly early in the semester before increasing around midterms and finals as podcast assignments come due. Spanish courses are among the classes that bring larger groups of students into the studios.
Granger said podcasting also offers students a less rigid way to communicate than some traditional assignments.
“It’s a great medium for sharing more informal stories or sharing a story a lot more casually,” he said.
Class assignments account for only part of the podcasting taking place at SDSU. Faculty members, student organizations and students producing their own shows also use the studios.
Pope has also used podcast episodes to document a community-engaged course involving SDSU mentors and middle and high school students. He said he could see podcasting becoming a formal part of future course assignments.
Lach said use of the center’s podcasting facilities has roughly doubled each academic year for the past three years, with demand peaking when large class assignments come due.
The growth has coincided with the rise of generative AI, though Lach cautioned against drawing a direct connection.
Flanigan believes part of podcasting’s appeal comes from something technology cannot replace: hearing another person explain an idea in their own voice.
“I think they want the human voice,” Flanigan said, “and they want that human filter.
