Louisa Lim wins 2021 JERAA Outstanding Teaching Award

By JERAA

December 3, 2021

Louisa Lim of the Centre for Advancing Journalism at the University of Melbourne has won the 2021  JERAA Award for Outstanding Teaching in a Journalism Program.

The project, entitled Podcast as Method: Student-led Cohort-Building through Remote Podcast Production, saw Louisa create a student-led system of remote podcast production, allowing students to learn how to podcast through a truly immersive and experiential process.

Harnessing the help of experts in the University of Melbourne Museums and Collections Department, they decided to do a local version of Marc Fennell’s podcast Stuff the British Stole.

The result was the Uncurated podcast series, which last night received the group innovation award at the 2021 JERAA Ossie Awards.

The judges thought this was a really innovative project, which was delivered remotely, and demonstrates great buy-in and learning from students and an exciting publication outcome.

“The project engaged students in both podcasting and examining understandings of material culture, emphasising the transformative nature of quality teaching.

“The topic area, the collaborative student work on all facets of the podcast series and the incorporation of industry guests as both sources of information and sounding-boards for ideas and problems were brought together in authentic and innovative ways.

“The fact that it was done during lockdown adds a further dimension to the innovative nature of the project.”

Louisa said the $2000 prize money will be used as seed money to set up a Centre for Advancing Journalism Podcast Studio at the University of Melbourne, “bringing together alumni, staff and current students as interns to create podcasts for clients, initially University of Melbourne academics, but then possibly external clients”.