Narrative and Audio

For our projects this week, we focused on how we could integrate narrative design in auditory-only learning content. My goal with this particular project is to not only be educational, but inspirational as well. I chose to make mentoring the main focus of my audio project with the intention that this would be part of a series of podcast-like learning content available to employees in the workplace and/or used as promotional material for a workplace-sponsored mentoring program.

According to research (Eby, et al., 2007; Kammeyer-Mueller & Judge, 2007), mentoring has a significant positive impact on employees in the workplace. Employees with strong mentoring relationships benefit professionally and personally through more rapid advancement, higher job satisfaction, improved interpersonal skills, a better work-life balance, and more. Mentoring has the potential to transform not just the employee, but the organization as well.

Learning Objectives:

  • Listeners will be able to recognize the benefits of mentoring relationships.
  • Listeners will be able to reflect on their own previous mentoring experiences.

Listen Now

Text transcript available upon request.

Design Concept

For this project, I wanted to integrate authentic stories from employees who’ve been positively impacted by a mentoring relationship with details defining mentoring and types of mentoring relationships that exist. I reached out to colleagues at NYU with interesting career paths and experiences asking them to take part in this project as an interview subject. Thankfully, they all agreed and provided me wonderful insights into the transformational impact mentoring has had on their personal and professional lives.

Interview Subjects:

  • Natalie Hidalgo – Associate Vice President for Global Campus Safety, Office of Public Safety
  • Tricia Khan – Web Project and Quality Manager, Digital Communications, University Relations and Public Affairs
  • Michael McCaw – Associate Director for Academic Appointments, Office of the Provost
  • Tamara Santiago – Associate Director for IT Engagement, Information Technology
  • David Vogelsang – Executive Director, Center for Student Life, Office of Student Affairs
  • Chris Woods – Director of the LGBTQ+ Center, Center for Multicultural Education and Programs, Office of Global Inclusion, Diversity, and Strategic Innovation

My interview questions for each person varied slightly, especially so for Michael McCaw who served as my mentoring subject matter expert because of his prior work creating a mentoring program for the Administrative Management Council. Here is the draft of questions I used when interviewing Tamara Santiago:

  1. What is your name and what do you do?
  2. You’ve had such an interesting journey: working full-time, going to graduate school part-time, and also being a single parent. What role did mentoring have in getting you to this point in your career today?
  3. If you were mentoring a young Tamara early in her career, knowing what you know now, what would you say to her?
  4. What piece of advice or lesson you’ve gleaned from a mentor has stuck with you?
  5. Is there a mentor you’ve had that you’d like to thank? If so, what’s their name and what would you like to say to them?

Editing Process

I recorded all of the interviews using Zoom, which has an option where I can download just the audio file. I then imported those files into GarageBand along with some of my own narration I recorded separately using the Voice Memos app on my iPhone. Although I had some idea of how I wanted the project to go, I relied on the responses of my interview subjects to guide me in which clips to include and when.

Audio editing process in Garageband

Audio Design Principles

My intention was to make this both engaging and educational, so I included some clips of interview banter as well as some uplifting background music at the beginning and end. In following with NPR’s training on how to begin audio stories, I decided to dive right in with narrative elements—specifically, some of the immediate responses I got from my interviewees when I asked them reflective questions. By starting this way, I want to spark the listener’s curiosity before then supplying them with the rest of the learning content.

I was intentional with the questions I asked of my interview subjects because I wanted their responses to prompt moments of connection and reflection with the listener, giving them opportunities to cognitively engage with the content. If combined with a formal learning plan or experience, this could also serve as pretraining (Mayer & Moreno, 2010) for the learning to establish a foundation to reduce cognitive load in later learning sessions.

References

Edy, L. T., Allen, T. D., Evans, S. C., Ng, T., & DuBois, D. L. (2008). Does mentoring matter? A multidisciplinary meta-analysis comparing mentored and non-mentored individuals. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 72(2), 254–267. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jvb.2007.04.005

Kammeyer-Mueller, J. D., & Judge, T. A. (2008). A quantitative review of mentoring research: Test of a model. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 72(3), 269–283. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jvb.2007.09.006

Mayer, R. E., & Moreno, R. (2010). Techniques that reduce extraneous cognitive load and manage intrinsic cognitive load during multimedia learning. In Plass, J. L., Moreno, R., & Brünken, R. (Eds.) Cognitive load theory (pp. 131–152). Cambridge University Press.

Attributions

Music by Mezhdunami from Pixabay.

Thumbnail photo from Christina @ wocintechchat.com on Unsplash.