Learning Through Sound: Podcasts, Soundscapes, and Soundwalks in the Classroom

By Agustina Maria Checa and Zahra Khalid

Abstract: Using sound in the classroom can complement traditional (visual-centered) learning. There are many ways to incorporate sound in content delivery as well as in student work. The ongoing pandemic has deepened gaps around access and equity that have historically existed in the educational system. Incorporating sonic media in assignments and content delivery can help students engage with class lessons in novel ways. This essay examines the pedagogical promise of podcasts, soundwalks, and soundscapes, building from our own teaching and learning experiences using sound in assignments or as an alternative to readings and/or lecture videos.

_____________________

The pandemic shift to online teaching and learning has posed serious challenges for universities, and deepened gaps in access and equity in the educational system that predate the covid-19 era. For those becoming increasingly aware of such access and equity issues, this challenging time is also an opportunity to try new things and reconfigure approaches to teaching and learning. One productive avenue is the use of sonic media in coursework. By sonic media, we mean audio files that can be recorded and produced for pedagogical, informational, or analytical purposes, and can include podcasts as well as other lesser-known forms, such as soundscapes and soundwalks. There are many ways to incorporate sound in content delivery as well as in student work, and doing so can help students engage with class lessons in novel ways, as well as offer opportunities to practice non-traditional writing. This essay examines the pedagogical promise of sonic media; specifically, how these media can complement traditional teaching tools and styles in the online classroom and beyond.

Vision has been a favored sense for learning in Western academia, and is similarly privileged elsewhere in the world, wherever modern epistemologies are prevalent. This privileging of the visual sense above others, what some call ocularcentrism (see Ochoa Gautier 2014: 13), has hindered other forms of perceiving and relating to the world, such as those that occur through listening. Returning our attention and reflexivity to sound can be transformative for learning, as sound is linked to the bodily practices we use to understand our environment and give meaning to our social relations. The intrinsic sensorial qualities of sound can hone our sense of being-in-the-world: it is impermanent and diffuse, seemingly both inside and outside our bodies (Abramo 2014). Hearing is a primarily temporal sense: it requires contact, immerses us in the event, and therefore, it is affective; on the other hand, seeing is a primarily spatial sense, it provides perspective on the event while requiring distance from it, and in this way, it is intellectual (Sterne 2015). Pedagogies based on sound might present knowledge as less permanent and fixed, because the experience of listening resonates with the listener rather than simply showing them something. When used to complement traditional modes of learning, the intrinsic qualities of sound can encourage more democratic pedagogies (Abramo 2014). For these reasons, educators have become interested in using sonic media-based approaches to knowledge creation and learning (Abramo 2014; Anderson 2008; Sterne 2015; Kavanagh 2004).

Including sound in the classroom can challenge colonial epistemologies that have traditionally privileged written literacies over oral ones. It can empower different voices and ways of learning that can connect us to our environments in critical and responsive ways that go beyond traditional Western epistemology and pedagogy, which has predominantly favored the visual sense alone. Adding novel and multimodal ways for students to engage with class materials affords them options; and in turn, provides new avenues for knowledge production that may help students from population groups that have been historically marginalized in higher education, and who continue to experience built-in structural inequalities in their everyday lives.

This piece offers some ways to incorporate sonic media in traditional college courses across the humanities and social sciences, for both delivering course content and in student assignments. There are multiple ways to engage sound, i.e. via soundscapes, soundwalks, podcasts, oral histories, and interviews. Here, we explain the first three of these terms, and share our own experiences employing them in our teaching and learning careers within the City University of New York (CUNY) system—specifically, the Graduate Center, Brooklyn College, and Queens College. This includes our multiple roles as college instructors in Music (Agustina) and Urban Studies (Zahra), and as PhD candidates, having completed graduate coursework in our respective departments at the CUNY Graduate Center. In doing so, we showcase how using sound in classrooms can empower different voices and ways of learning.

Soundscapes. More than just aural landscapes.

A soundscape is an acoustic field of study, a record of sounds in space that can be analytically classified to distinguish their significant features. The notion is usually associated with Murray Schafer’s book The Tuning of the World (1994[1977]) and the group of scholars that joined his World Soundscape Project at Simon Fraser University. Schafer’s interest in acoustic environments stems from anxieties about ecology and sonic worlds transforming due to industrialization, urbanization, and changing technologies. The notion of a “soundscape” has allowed scholars and sound enthusiasts to identify what makes a particular space sound the way it does and reflect on their sonic connections. It may be helpful to think of a soundscape as an auditory landscape that includes the various aural components of a specific place in time.

Like a landscape, soundscape as a term “contains the contradictory forces of the natural and the cultural, the fortuitous and the composed, the improvised and the deliberately produced” (Samuels et al. 2010: 330). In the same way that a landscape is “constituted by cultural histories, ideologies, and practices of seeing,” a soundscape “implicates listening as a cultural practice” (ibid). Listening to a soundscape, one can establish connections between sounding bodies, practices, and the acoustics afforded by the materialities and forces (for instance: wind, pollution, rush hour) that make up a space. But for these connections to be made, an effective soundscape composition requires an attentive place-based practice of listening. Fostering a sensorially-engaged relation with a space of study demands time and work.

How one listens is determined by cultural backgrounds and lived experiences. As stated by media scholar Jonathan Sterne: “every configuration of hearing implies people, power and placement” (2015: 72). Recording sounds created by particular alignments of objects and subjects (that disappear soon after one hears them) breaks with the ephemerality of that experience. This is where a soundscape composition begins: when listening ears select particular sounds from a greater sounding environment and create a record of them. Each of these records are “raw” field recordings that can later be arranged in a way that is meaningful or that conveys a specific narrative. This is the “composition” part of a soundscape: a synthesis of materials generated through hours of attentive listening into one audio file that represents a sensorial engagement with the space. Producing soundscapes can be a transformative aural practice, because the process allows for a critical study of space, and the bodies and forces that constitute it.

This is a sample soundscape composition made by Agustina. What actors, distinctive sounding elements, and narrative can you identify?

This soundscape was made with field recordings from a gated playground in Washington Square Park in Manhattan, New York City, for the graduate course “Ethnography of Space and Place.” To make this composition, Agustina visited this playground for several hours at different times of the day. She brought her recorder with her and sat in different parts of the playground. While sounds were being recorded she took notes to get a sense of how this space is made through its sounds and vice versa. Narratively, the composition highlights the juxtaposition between natural components of the park: birds chirping, trees blowing with the wind, and human interactions, with heavier sounds, such as the clanging of metal gates, a distinctive sound of this gated playground. Ending the piece with a snippet of a recording from Washington Square Park made in the 1960s, the composition connects the different aural experiences of this historic park.

Soundwalks. Bring in the movement.

A soundwalk involves many of the elements that make up a soundscape. It, too, begins with attentive place-based listening. But a soundwalk, as the name implies, is centered around movement—a walk—and the changing sound dynamics that accompany the researcher as they move through space. While a soundscape may represent a more static aural representation, the narrative of a soundwalk composition is based on sounds that change from one point of space to another. Weaker sounds can become louder, then weaker again, and may include interactions between the researcher and others. Listening to how sonic environments change as one moves across space can offer a new way to explore the effects of gentrification, for example, where the sounds of working-class neighborhoods are juxtaposed with noise from construction projects and conversations between affluent individuals. Similarly, soundwalks can offer a critical platform to showcase the ways in which racism operates through sound, creating and maintaining various “sonic color lines” (Ackerman 2016), and can represent how different bodies experience space according to their race, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, and ability. Because sonic environments can sometimes be hostile to individuals with non-normative identities, soundwalks—by emphasizing movements and bodies—can offer a unique avenue into understanding how people inhabit and experience places.

Sharing his experience of using soundwalks in a course on Black Music and Corporate America at the University of Virginia, Rami Toubia Stucky learned from student feedback that soundwalks “allowed them to learn about themselves and think differently about the area in which they live.” Students “became more attuned to their surroundings—questioning what makes a neighborhood and for whom?” (Stucky 2021). Used in the classroom, soundwalks and soundscapes encourage students to engage with, think critically about, and produce knowledge on spaces in ways that go beyond “representational,” visual-centered presentations of work (Wilson 2016). One can read about gentrification and draw important connections between the text and one’s lived experience; yet, listening to the sounds of changing neighborhoods can provide another way to understand—perhaps more viscerally—the experiences of those affected by it.

This is an example of a soundwalk made by Agustina for the graduate class “Sound and Society” using field recordings from an exhibition on modular synthesizers in Brooklyn, New York City. It features different kinds of sounds that are distinctive of an exhibition where people gather and socialize around sound-producing machines. The walk in the seconds prior to entering the event shows a drastic comparison between what goes on inside versus outside this space. Choosing a soundwalk rather than a soundscape composition for this aural setting allows the listener to get a sense of the variety of sounds created by different synthesizers and their combinations, as well as get a feel of the social group that makes up this event by their distinctly technical conversations. This soundscape composition complemented a research paper that used ethnographic methods to analyze this particular music scene. Agustina chose to make this composition for a more accurate portrayal of the dense and unique sounds making up this social world, which were harder to convey via adjectives in text. What do you think was the narrative aim of the composition? How would you describe the sounds that make up this space?

Podcasts. Voices to the front.

Podcasts may be the sonic media you and your students are already most familiar with. These are digital audio files distributed over the Internet—and through apps on your phone—which usually take the form of a series, with episodes, and can involve multiple individuals discussing a variety of topics. Podcasts can include different kinds of media, such as a snippet from a soundscape or soundwalk, an interview, a monologue, or a piece of music. Because podcasts involve the voice of the presenter, they are less abstract than soundscapes or soundwalks in conveying information, while presenting information in a dynamic way. This quality can be useful for content delivery as well as for students producing knowledge of their own.

Podcasting, i.e., producing podcasts, can empower students who struggle with conventional written assignments, affording them another option to demonstrate their engagement with class materials. In creating podcasts, students employ critical thinking, conduct independent research, and produce different kinds of writing, as well as engage their creativity and ingenuity in producing knowledge in a format that is less familiar, and thus less formulaic, than a traditional essay or research paper. Such an assignment empowers students to be creators of knowledge. In many educational settings, only certain voices are able to produce “legitimate” knowledge, mostly centering around the written word. Asking students to create podcasts can signal that their voice and ideas are valid as sources of knowledge, too, and they become co-teachers and co-learners. Given the opportunity to include interviews and oral histories in their projects, students can more robustly integrate the voices of their communities in the production of knowledge. This can also provide an opportunity to BIPOC and other marginalized student voices to tell stories in ways that matter to them, and hear themselves as valid producers of knowledge. Discussions on how to do this ethically can be productive for any classroom. Although podcasting is an audio-based assignment, it involves practicing writing too, such as during planning and scripting. It also builds other skills, such as research, synthesis, and critical thinking. Scaffolding a podcasting assignment can break it up into smaller tasks that allow instructors to assess student work before the finished podcast is submitted. Using different kinds and genres of writing are proven to deepen learning by allowing students to draw on their various strengths (Bean 2011: 63).

Podcasts can also be used as an alternative to course readings or lectures. In a previous iteration of an Introductory Urban Studies course taught by Zahra at Queens College, one week the “reading” homework was to listen to a “This American Life” podcast episode on contemporary segregation practices that continue despite the Fair Housing Act passed by the United States’ Congress in 1968. The podcast revealed that even though such practices were made illegal decades ago, brokers sometimes characterize available properties as already rented if they find that the interested party is non-white and seems threatening to the racial composition of the building or neighborhood. When the class met in-person, the discussion loosely followed the themes that came up in the readings, and the podcast’s impact on students was clear from the quality of discussion. Students readily recalled the characters from the podcast and took interest in their plight, possibly because of the novelty of the text’s medium, but also because they heard the voices of real people who had been featured in the podcast, instead of just reading about them in print, making it easier to relate to them.

Another useful method is the “flipped classroom.” Here, the “reading” is a podcast episode or other sonic media, and the “homework” is to have students find articles that speak to the issue discussed in the media they listened to. This approach can mix things up: if reading reflections are the norm in your classroom, using the flipped classroom could be a welcome change and inject energy into class discussion. It would build student skills such as research, analysis, and speaking. However, if there are hearing-impaired students in class, or those for whom English is a second language, it is important to recommend podcasts that have transcripts, so that the course remains accessible.

In another multiple section course titled “Urban Social Movements,” also taught at Queens in Urban Studies by Zahra, the first third of the course was a bit heavy on theory, and after just the first two weeks or so, it began to look like students could use a breather. Running as a fully asynchronous course in the first fall (and full) semester of online teaching during the pandemic, it began to feel difficult and sometimes frustrating to convey complex ideas that were to form the basis of the remainder of the course as we moved into specific social movements. To allay this difficulty, but to retain the flavor of the course, a podcast where the same author talks about the theme but in a simplified way was assigned; in this case, David Harvey on the Urbanization of Class Struggle (hosted by LSE Podcasts). The original reading, comprising three chapters from Harvey’s 2012 book Rebel Cities: From the Right to the City to the Urban Revolution), was made optional. This was a relatively easy and engaging way to deliver the same content. Many authors give talks or interviews that explain their area of expertise more simply, even if they don’t often write in the same way. This served as one way of being mindful of pandemic-induced hardship that so many CUNY students faced, by protecting students’ time and effort spent in preparing for class alongside navigating the added responsibilities of pandemic lockdown life and studying away from campus.

Reflections

For many of us teaching at public institutions such as CUNY, empathy and solidarity became key premises guiding our approaches to pedagogy when the pandemic entered our lives. Among other inclusive strategies, incorporating sonic media can be valuable: whether by replacing a lengthy or dense article with a conversation students listen to on their commute; or by inspiring deeper engagement with the components of their environment and the social dynamics that shape them. Building on the promise of Open Educational Resources and approaches to pedagogy where students are envisioned as co-teachers and co-learners, sonic compositions made for your classroom can live beyond a private submission and in public repositories of course content on the Internet. Podcasts, soundscapes, and soundwalks from past students can serve to inspire new ones, and can be readily available for any student who may want to showcase their work on the web. Our experiences assigning different sonic media-based assignments at CUNY colleges, facilitating workshops, and conducting a class visit on this topic showed us how exciting and fruitful these assignments can be. Building from these experiences, we have compiled this resource list with practical suggestions to get you and your students started.

One last note about accessibility is pressing. Including sonic media can help address certain equity issues at the university, as it can provide easier access to content, and allows students to practice learning and producing knowledge via multiple senses. However, while sonic media can address certain inequalities, incorporating these can also bring up other issues of accessibility. Students with hearing impairment, discomfort with technology, or learning disabilities may not benefit from audio-based assignments. Furthermore, lack of access to microphones, recorders, and quiet spaces for podcast production can bring up more anxieties with regards to incorporating sonic media in class. To accommodate these impediments, instructors can help by providing alternative materials and assignments to keep the course inclusive and accessible. Students can use their cell phones (with built-in microphones), and sound repositories and audio editing tools that are freely available on the web for course work. Learning centers within colleges and universities, such as libraries, can also be important resources for students to borrow equipment or access sound repositories.

While certain disciplines may be more amenable to incorporating sonic media, others may not be so readily adaptable. Follow your instinct to determine which of the ideas offered here may be of most relevance, and leave the rest. New instructors may feel hesitant experimenting with their course in offering a non-traditional reading or assignment. In this case, it may be best to stick with what feels most comfortable, leaving the experimentation for future iterations of the course. And finally, given the sonic bias of this approach, where applicable, it is crucial to provide alternative learning options for hearing-impaired students. The main takeaway: be flexible and inclusive, whatever that may look like for your discipline and course!

To close, here is some feedback Agustina received from students on their final podcasting assignment for a music class at Brooklyn College:

“I enjoyed the planning, really thinking about how I wanted to incorporate what I took out of the class to the world around me. It was so much fun. Also being able to talk to friends and family about something that we know and love and share together. I learned a lot about my friends and it made what I’ve learned all the more real.”

“I’m grateful to have been able to do the podcast because I’ve never done anything like it and it was really fun to do!”

“I enjoyed talking about my culture and my history. I was so happy I was able to share some information that is not available in English.”

References

Abramo, J. (2014). “Music Education that Resonates: An Epistemology and Pedagogy of Sound.” Philosophy of Music Education Review , Vol. 22, No. 1 (Spring 2014), pp. 78-95

Anderson, S. (2008). “Effective Integration of Sound Pedagogy in an Online Format. In J. Luca & E. Weippl (Eds.), Proceedings of ED-MEDIA 2008--World Conference on Educational Multimedia, Hypermedia & Telecommunications. Vienna, Austria: Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE), 3579-3586.

Bean, J. C. (2011). Engaging ideas: The Professor's Guide to Integrating Writing, Critical Thinking, and Active Learning in the Classroom. California: John Wiley & Sons.

Kavanagh, D. (2004). Ocularcentrism and its Others: A Framework for Metatheoretical Analysis. Organization Studies, 25(3), 445-464. https://doi.org/10.1177/0170840604040672

McCartney, A.M. (2014). “Soundwalking: creating moving environmental sound narratives” in Sumanth Gopinath and Jason Stanyek (eds.). The Oxford Handbook of Mobile Music Studies, Volume 2, 212-237.

Ochoa Gautier, A. (2014). Aurality: Listening and Knowledge in Nineteenth-Century Colombia. Durham: Duke University Press.

Samuels, D. W., Meintjes, L., Ochoa, A. M., & Porcello, T. (2010). ”Soundscapes: Toward a Sounded Anthropology”. Annual Review of Anthropology, 39, 329-345.

Sterne, J. (2015) “Hearing” in David Novak and Matt Sakakeeny (eds.) Keywords in Sound. Durham: Duke University Press, 65-77.

Sterne, J. (2016) “Afterword: Sound Pedagogy.” The Auditory Culture Reader 2.0, Michael Bull and Les Back (eds.). New York: Bloombury, 453-457.

Walzer, D. (2020). “Sound Narrative: Honing a Deeper Understanding of Soundscapes”. Revista Vortex. Vol 8, Iss 1, 1-10.

Wilson, H. (2016). “Sonic Geographies, Soundwalks and More-Than-Representational Methods.” The Auditory Culture Reader 2.0, Michael Bull and Les Back (eds.). New York: Bloombury.