Enhancing Podcasting by Leveraging AI

Podcasts, or iPod broadcasts, have been around for almost two decades since the first podcasts were broadcast in 2004 [1]. As early as 2005, podcasts have been used across the spectrum of education [2, 3]. Higher education, medical education, and organizational training have all adopted podcasting as an educational tool [4, 5, 6]. This popularity of podcasting has been facilitated by its on-demand availability, access across various devices, and cost considerations. 

“A podcast is a piece of episodical, downloadable or streamable, primarily spoken audio content, distributed via the internet, playable anywhere, at any time, produced by anyone who so wishes” [7].

The popularity of podcasts in education continues to grow as more educators use them to enhance their teaching. Podcasts are used in different ways to enhance eLearning.

• Flexibility and accessibility: Podcasts allow instructors to record their lectures so learners can access the content at their convenience. The podcasts also enable learners to return to the content multiple times to learn at their own pace [8].
• Creating presence: Podcasts allow instructors to bridge the transactional distance in eLearning and create a presence for their learners [9].
• Complementary tools: Podcasts can serve as discrete educational pieces that are complementary to formal education [10].

The popularity of podcasts is fueled by:

1. Ease of creation: Anyone with an audio recorder and a microphone can record a podcast. Modern smartphones have the capability to record good-quality podcasts.
2. Ease of production: Numerous audio editing software tools are freely available. These tools are user-friendly and have a low learning curve reducing the barrier to entry.
3. Hosting options: Podcasts can be uploaded to personal websites or to various dedicated podcast hosting platforms.
4. Cost considerations: Technological developments have made it easy to create podcasts for little to no cost. This offers the opportunity for anyone to create podcasts.
5. Global reach: Podcasts are accessible by anyone who has access to the internet. Therefore, they have global reach and appeal and cater to learners in high-income and low and middle-income countries [5].

During the early years of podcasting, the challenges facing educational podcast creators related to technology. While technological innovations have made it technically easy to create podcasts, other challenges exist. Since podcasts are episodical, a regular stream of content is needed. Furthermore, in a landscape saturated with podcasts, it is difficult to gain and maintain the audience's attention. However, just as technology made creating podcasts easy, new generative artificial intelligence (AI) technology can help address these challenges.

This article explores how generative AI tools can be used in the different steps of creating a podcast, from the planning stage to publicizing the podcast. Educators can find podcasting a daunting task. The suggestions in this article will walk a person through the process of creating a podcast and provide examples of tools that can be used to make the process easy.

 (At the end of this article, Table 1 lists all the tools mentioned and links for more information.)

Topic Selection and Research

One of the initial challenges podcasters face is generating compelling content ideas. AI tools can analyze vast amounts of textual data from various sources, such as research publications, news articles, social media, and online forums, providing podcasters with valuable insights into popular subjects and emerging trends. This can enable a consistent stream of current ideas for podcasts.

Tools to consider: ChatGPT, Bard, and Bing.

Tip for educators: Provide your course syllabus, including course objectives and readings, to the AI tool. This will help the AI tool contextualize the data it searches.

Content Generation

Once a topic has been identified, the next step is to write the script. AI-powered writing assistants are becoming increasingly sophisticated, offering podcasters a helping hand in script writing and editing. With features like grammar and style suggestions, automatic proofreading, and even context-based sentence completion, AI writing assistants streamline the scripting process, saving podcasters time and effort.

Tools to consider: ChatGPT, Capsho, Bard, and Bing.

Tip for educators: Provide scripts of previous podcasts you might have recorded to the AI tool. The AI tool will then learn your writing style and generate scripts in your style.

Audio Editing and Enhancement

Audio quality is paramount in podcasting. AI-powered audio editing tools can automatically clean up background noise, remove echo, and enhance overall sound quality. By employing advanced algorithms, these tools can optimize audio files, ensuring a professional and immersive listening experience for the audience. Additionally, AI technology can aid in adjusting volume levels, equalizing audio, and even generating dynamic transcripts synchronized with the audio, making it easier for listeners to follow along. AI tools can also easily find clip highlights, cut unnecessary filler words like “oohs” and “ums,” and even remove awkward pauses.

Tools to consider: Adobe Audition, Logitech Streamlabs, and OBS.

Tip for educators: While AI tools can do a lot of audio cleanup, it is best to start with a quality recording.

Develop Detailed Show Notes

AI tools can transcribe audio recordings. These transcriptions can help with accessibility and for developing other promotional materials. Show notes are different from a transcript. While a transcript is a verbatim textual representation of the audio, show notes summarize the main points discussed in the episode. Show notes should include timestamps for different topics or segments, guest bios, and links to any resources or references mentioned. Show notes provide listeners with a summary and help with search engine optimization (SEO) for your podcast.

AI tools can review transcripts and generate show notes, a catchy title, and session summaries.

Tools to consider: Google Meet, Capsho, YouTube, and Otter.ai can all provide transcripts. ChatGPT, Bard, and Bing can produce show notes.

Tip for educators: Provide a guest CV or link to a guest’s webpage and AI can create an engaging guest bio.         

Create Podcast Artwork

Design eye-catching podcast artwork that represents your podcast brand and episodes. The artwork should be in line with your podcast's theme, visually appealing, and meet the specifications required by podcast platforms. Use graphics or images, along with the podcast title and branding elements, to create a professional and engaging cover image.

Tools to consider: Canva and Dall-E.

Tip for educators: Different podcast platforms have different image resolution requirements. AI tools can auto-resize images for different platforms. 

“Burn It” Publishing and Promoting Your Podcast

Promote your podcast through social media channels, your institution's website, and relevant communities or forums to reach your target audience. Posting the podcast artwork and clips from the podcasts can generate more clicks and drive listeners to your podcast. AI tools can generate social media posts for different platforms. AI can also be used to generate email messages to your podcast listserv. In addition, AI can provide first drafts of blog articles, another way to funnel listeners to your podcast.

Tools to consider: Canva, Capsho,  ChatGPT, Bard, and Bing.

Tip for educators: Use AI tools that can generate social media posts with text and images.

Continuous Improvement

AI algorithms excel in analyzing vast amounts of data and can provide personalized recommendations. AI analytics can provide valuable insights into the performance of your podcast. By analyzing metrics such as listener engagement, retention rates, and feedback, you can continuously improve your content, format, and delivery to optimize the learning experience. In addition, it is possible to view countries and cities of listener locations by episode, which can provide unique insights into listener networks. It is also helpful to see what apps and devices the podcast’s listeners use to better understand audience habits around listening to the podcast. These metrics are provided by podcast hosting platforms. While the free versions might have limited information, paid subscriptions can provide access to robust analytics.

Tools to consider: Hosting platforms such as iTunes, SoundCloud, and Anchor.

Tip for educators: Podcasting platforms provide statistical analysis of podcasts. Access these statistics regularly.

Limitations to Consider

While AI tools can help educators accelerate the process of podcasting, it is important to remember that many of these tools are in their developmental infancy and have limitations.  Generative AI technologies are prone to “hallucinations” where they generate fictitious information, such as non-existent citations and publications, that is presented as factual [11]. Furthermore, they can be “confidently wrong” when they reiterate incorrect information [12]. 

Some of these tools are trained on data with cutoff dates. Therefore, the information presented might be outdated. At this early stage of these technologies, we are still discovering their limitations. There might be more that have yet to be uncovered.

When using these technologies, their responses should be treated as a starting point. However, the information generated must be rigorously checked and validated by users [13].

Conclusion

Technological improvements have made it easier for educators to create podcasts. AI tools are continuing this trend. In this article, we have presented suggestions for how AI can be used to accelerate the creation of podcasts. We have listed the technologies that we have used. However, these are merely suggestions. There are numerous technologies that provide similar functionalities that educators can leverage based on personal preference and access. 

Table 1. Tools overview

References

The opinions and assertions expressed herein are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Uniformed Services University or the Department of Defense.

About the Authors

Dr. Andrea Austin is the Senior Lecturer at the Naval Postgraduate School’s MOVES Institute in the Healthcare Modeling and Simulation Certificate program. She is an emergency physician and Simulation Director at Southwest Healthcare in Temecula, CA. She hosts the podcast "The Revitalizing Doctor" and is the Chief Innovation and Learning Officer for Revitalize Women Physician Circle. Her academic interests include simulation, physician well-being, and gender equity.

Anita Samuel, Ph.D., Editor-in Chief of elearn Magazine, is Associate Director of Distance Learning and Associate Professor at the Center for Health Professions Education, Uniformed Services University of Health Sciences, Maryland. Her areas of expertise are online learning, educational technology, and adult education. Dr. Samuel’s research focuses on continuing professional development and workplace training for healthcare professionals. She publishes articles at the intersection of medical education, adult education, and online learning. She explores online learning spaces as effective training environments for professionals. She has won the 2022 USU School of Medicine Impact Award for her work in facilitating distance education and the 2019 USU Education Day award for using videos in online courses to create a presence for learners.