Podcasting as Social Scholarship: A Tool to Increase the Public Impact of Scholarship and Research

For decades, social work educators and scholars have pondered the question of how to best prepare students and practitioners to learn and apply evidence-based practices and policies for alleviating and individual and social problems. The most common response has been to expose students to evidence-based practices and policies and to involve social work practitioners in continuing-education courses and workshops. In 2007, I used a new type of media—podcasts—to address the question of how to most effectively disseminate research and best practices to social work students and practitioners. This article provides a brief definition and history of podcasting in social work, reviews social work scholarship on podcasting, provides results from a survey of social work podcast consumers, and discusses the role of podcasting in the larger context of social scholarship. The article concludes with recommendations for social work scholars, practitioners, and leaders related to the effective use of podcasting to increase the public impact of scholarship and research.