Podcast Project Honoured with Digital Award
2023-09-08 Lüneburg/Magdeburg. At its annual conference just held in Magdeburg, the Federal Association of University Communication presented four outstanding digital communication projects from universities with the Digital Award 2023. First place went to Leuphana University Lüneburg with its project "Selfcast Studio: Corporate Podcasting with Alumni and Multichannel Publishing".
With its "do it yourself" kit for general and low-threshold podcast production, Leuphana University Communication was able to successfully establish the medium "podcast". There are now six podcast formats with 160 episodes, approx. 3,800 audio minutes on over 24 platforms on the web, radio, apps, internet radio and media cooperations. Leuphana has already registered more than 2 million views of its podcasts.
The path to self-produced podcasts is made easy for users. A small video studio is available in the university library, which also offers an editing suite for post-production. A specially created podcast manual explains step by step on 85 pages how to find a topic, how to produce it and how to market it. Video tutorials provide further support so that the medium can be used easily by all university members.
Project initiator Philip Dunkhase recognised the potential of podcasts for study choice decisions early on: "In the study orientation phase, Generation Alpha students inform themselves for the most part on the internet and increasingly use podcast formats via various apps. Universities must respond to this change in demand." He refers to a media usage analysis by Leuphana, which had shown that information about student satisfaction (online evaluations) is just as important for choosing a course of study as recommendations and experience reports.
The competition is organised by the Federal Association of University Communication and the ZEIT publishing group. The projects were judged by a jury of five experts from journalism, agencies and science communication. The other places went to ETH Zurich and TU Chemnitz. A special prize went to the University of Wuppertal.