by Dr Simon Rowberry (UCL Centre for Publishing)

Edited 16 May 2024 to add: Inksights is now live! Check out the podcast here. 

In an era where digital landscapes evolve at lightning speed, equipping students with future-proof skills is more crucial than ever. With generative AI and multimedia platforms redefining professional boundaries, how can educational institutions stay ahead?

The answer: overhauling our curriculum for agility by embedding digital literacy throughout, and offering opportunities for students to work on real-world, career-enhancing projects.

A team of seven MA Publishing students, led by Amy, Lily and Mira, have been doing just this by working on Inksights, a podcast aimed at combining academic and industry perspectives on current publishing topics.

Each episode will blend interviews, reviews, debates, and news stories. Each member of team focuses on a different part of the podcast’s creation, production and marketing.

Finding your voice and preferred ways of collaborating

During the Inksights podcast’s pilot recording, the team tackled the art of collaboration head-on. The hosts encountered a challenge—avoiding interruptions—but ingeniously resolved it by adopting a lip balm stick as their “talking stick.” This simple yet effective strategy ensured clear, orderly discussions.

The Inksights team also skilfully navigated the challenge of sounding distinct and dynamic, steering clear of a “robotic” tone. The pilot showcases this success, achieved through planning and ensuring each host’s voice was unique and engaging. You can listen to it below (13:09 minutes long):

 

Methods of collaboration and working with guests were also challenges. While exploring various platforms, students discovered that each had its pros and cons. Zoom emerged as a standout for virtual sessions: the team praised it “for virtual interview/podcast recordings. The recording was quickly processed and available to access on the cloud by the production team.”

Working collaboratively on a podcast requires digital collaboration tools, which have proliferated over the last five years. The Inksights team are still finding the collaborative workflow that is most suitable for their needs. They are spending time to get this right early to avoid having to pivot to another setup later.

Our next steps include continuing to develop networks with similar groups of students and academics working on generative AI/podcasting across the University and the sector to gain further valuable insights and share good practice.

What Generative AI (currently) can and cannot do

Eden leads the generative AI project, focusing on images, videos, and animations. These are under-developed areas within publishing and require tools beyond Open AI’s Chat-GPT.

Through this scoping work, Eden notes: “I have become much more knowledgeable with this cutting-edge technology than industry professionals, putting me in a better position for job prospects.”

The projects highlight the constraints of today’s Generative AI tools in publishing. For example, it is possible to ask Chat-GPT to generate a book cover image, but this image appears in a square frame that requires further editing.

The file format of the output frequently clashes with current publishing workflows. This shifts human effort towards tedious tasks like cropping and format conversion, detracting from the creative focus on aesthetics and composition.

Likewise, most Generative AI services focus on a single media output, making cross-platform integrating challenging.

The Inksight podcast team’s experience with Zoom illustrates the benefits of human intervention as it “allows us to have video material to use for promotional purposes (Reels, YouTube, UCL publishing Instagram).”

This underscores the ongoing need to balance automation with human creativity, a vital skill for enhancing our students’ future employability.

The sustainability of extra-curricular media projects

The one-year format of our MA programme presents a significant hurdle for extracurricular activities as demonstrated by previous projects including Uncovering Publishing and Shelf Healing. Just as students hone their skills, they are ready to graduate, often having secured industry positions.

We do not yet have a practical solution to this challenge, but as the two projects continue to develop, we will look for ways to ensure greater continuity between cohorts and ensure teaching colleagues are equipped with the relevant skills to assist new groups of students.

The Inksights team are currently editing the first full episode of the podcast with the aim to release it by the end of Term 2.

Acknowledgements: Thanks to Amy, Eden, Lily and Mira for providing their thoughts on their progress to date. Simon used GPT-4 to improve the readability and conciseness of the first draft.