Everyone agrees podcasts are great for learning.  But what structure should they follow?  After teaching a large session on podcasting at ASTD’s TechKnowledge in Vegas last month, I was asked if there was standard way to structure learning podcasts.

Well, no there isn’t.  And in fact, if there was a standard structure to follow, a lot of learning podcasts would be pretty boring.  You know what happens in boring training session, right?  People go to sleep.  It’s no different for boring podcasts. 

Your podcasts need to be lively and interesting.  You need to use techniques that will draw in listeners.  For example, your spoken word content needs to be tight and well scripted.  And you need to have a very clear editorial strategy.

Learning podcasts follow a didactic narrative

Learning podcasts are very specific in their focus.  The narrative is didactic.  They are not their to amuse, inform or entertain but to teach.  To be successful, you need to use very specific techniques.

Learning podcasts need an editorial strategy that is tweaked to didactic narrative.  Not surprisingly, we can do this by combining media and learning psychology.

In this post and series of posts over the next few weeks, I’m going to suggest five principles for creating learning podcasts that justify your time and energy. 

Once I've done that, I feel I can answer the question I was asked at ASTD in Vegas.  So on the back of those princples, I’ll share a structure you can follow that will help make your learning stick. 

Once you follow my structure a few times, you can adapt it to your specific needs, based on these five principles.

Five principles

Here are the five principles I’d like to suggest.  These are:

1.       Locate the bullseye – define the learning outcome

2.       Avoid indigestion – break your content into digestible chunks

3.       Go 3D – use multiple modalities to bring your content alive

4.       Be a content scrooge – make sure every piece of content achieves your learning outcome

5.       Hammer it home – use stylistic repetition to make the learning stick