Students WoW Radio 4

11 March 2009

The programme explores the work of the oral history StoryCorps project, which has a novel approach of documenting American society by recording conversations between people who know each other well.  The full Saturday programme uses material recorded and edited by volunteer Broadcast students and helps demonstrate the value of the StoryCorps approach in the UK.  Their topic brief was ‘Something I’ve never told you...’.

Marya Burgess, Senior Producer for the BBC Radio Documentaries Unit, commented: “I found the students' contributions extremely useful, since they illustrated precisely the point we were hoping to make in the programme, that people close to us may have the best stories, and that everyone's past contains events and emotions we may learn from. They had obviously grasped the issue and collected appropriate material, most of them with impressive technical competence. Their recordings provided an interesting adjunct to the programme's main thesis and I'm thrilled that the experience has proved so valuable to their studies."

The students on the BSc Broadcast and Media Production and BSc Broadcast Technology programmes undertook the project with real enthusiasm. The project energised and motivated the students who had never tackled creating and editing a radio piece before. They all volunteered for this project and it was structured in their personal development plans. The learning experience and feedback was considered so good, all the students and staff involved are keen to repeat the exercise. This is seen as a project that was an exemplary fit to the course, WoW and student career progression.

The project, devised and run by LJMU lecturer Colin Robinson, was embedded into the student’s Professional Development and will significantly enhance their portfolios. Colin commented: “All the students who went through the process, even those whose contributions are not used in the final cut, have done remarkably well. I was astounded by the quality of the material and particularly impressed by their effort in getting it delivered by the deadline to the required BBC technical standard.   What is important is that the process has provided all with a practical learning experience, which when allied to their World of Work skills, will underpin their future employability.  However, of great additional value was the personal learning the students reflected upon, this went beyond technical operations and for many gave a new personal insight.” 

'Tell me a StoryCorps' broadcasts on Radio 4 at 8pm on 21 March, and is repeated in a shorter version on Monday 23 March at 3pm.