Today, we’re featuring audio from a podcast called Novel Hand that was produced by Vanderbilt Alumna Alexa Bussman. Alexa studied Political Science, Economics, and Spanish while at Vanderbilt and interned at non-profits like International Justice Mission. Alexa is the founder and editor of Novel Hand, a project that aims to explore the best solutions to global humanitarian issues, and the podcast is an extension of this project.
She created Novel Hand to address a disconnect she noticed between her generation’s passion for social issues and innovative solutions that exist to solve these problems. We are featuring episode 2 of the Novel Hand podcast titled Ethical Fashion with Connie Tsai. Connie is an executive assistant at Nisolo, a Nashville company that desires to push the fashion industry in a more sustainable direction through intentionally designed, ethically made, fairly priced clothing.
While there was no formal rubric for creating this podcast, if you listen carefully you can discern that Alexa has created her own structure. She frames the podcast around these main points:
- What does ethical fashion look like and how can we recognize it?
- How did Connie get involved with ethical fashion?
- And what do we need to know, moving forward, as consumers?
By providing this structure, Alexa creates a cohesive piece of audio while leaving room for Connie to passionately discuss topics from protecting producers with living wages to the intricacies of designing ethical footwear.
Alexa’s podcast is just one aspect of how Novel Hand uses their values to move towards their goal, and this multi-level scaffolding can be applied to academia. Rather than entirely replacing an existing assignment or essay with a podcasting project, consider using a podcast in place of a traditional PowerPoint presentation with a podcasting assignment. This audio demonstrates that podcasting doesn’t have to be the main avenue towards reaching a goal but is clearly an effective and enticing tool to add to your toolbelt. To learn more about Alexa’s project Novel Hand, please see the link below.
Novel Hand: https://novelhand.com/