Knowledge Sharing/Tracking

I wanted to provide some context to my knowledge sharing/tracking assignment product here as I may not be able to share as much during my VoiceThread presentation since I will be focused on the tracking. After talking with Dr. Dennen about ways I could use this assignment to be useful in my teaching, I decided to explore two paths: Spotify and YouTube. I use a lot of podcasts and videos in my teaching so I wanted to explore platforms to curate playlists of both that could place all of these resources in one place (outside of Canvas) for my students but also for other educators. The class is on Gender and Leadership so the topics of mediums are on that topic specifically. 

I started last week with Spotify and crafted the beginnings of a playlist but decided after a few days, it may not be my best platform choice for a few reasons. While the app is free, most students only use it with premium and therefore, there would be a pay wall between their utilization of the resource. My Spotify is tied to my personal Facebook (this is the way I set up the account long ago) and I am not sure that I want my students all friend requesting me after they use the resource. Finally, from what I uncovered, the tracking data I would have access to would not be as fruitful as I hoped since it would really just be subscribers to the playlist since it was just curated content that others owned. It seems like you don't get true engagement tracking unless you own the content on Spotify (this could be wrong but what I discovered in my using of the app/platform).

Therefore, this weekend, I pivoted (think Ross from Friends) to YouTube. After looking into the tracking and engagement of this platform more, it seems like I will get better tracking data here from the playlist I have crafted thus far. There is YouTube Studio that will provide me with some decent gauging of engagement. I also had a friend search and when they look for the playlist ("Gender and Leadership Education"), it is the first search result (YAY!) which means it is accessible!

Finally, both playlists I have crafted are works in progress. For example, right now, I have over 20 videos in the playlist but I am still playing around with the order because I am making small content updates to our course calendar for fall since this will be the first time the class is taught virtually. I am also going to add captions to each video in the playlist that correspond with the course as I continue to piece together fall semester. Finally, I will add more videos and delete others as the content on YouTube continues to be updated by the second and more resources become available. 

Also, I am totally okay that their numbers won't be very high for the presentation to class because my students won't start using these until August! Their engagement is why I am making these and putting the work into making them a continual work in progress. If you want to check it out, I would be thankful! I am open to any and all feedback. See the playlist here.