Designing Podcast Content to Spark Family Conversations: Learnings from the Brains On! Podcast

Many families spend a considerable amount of time together in their vehicles, and podcasts can provide a highly engaging, screen-free educational alternative for children during this time. With National Science Foundation funding, we conducted a first-of-its-kind video-based research study to see how families interact with each other while listening in a vehicle environment and how a podcast can help facilitate that engagement. This report provides details about the specific design features of the kids' science podcast Brains On! that prompted verbal engagement by children and adults and the nature of the resulting conversations. We hope what we learned about Brains On! can help other content creators make design choices that enhance family interactions and learning conversations, which in turn support children’s STEM-based interests, knowledge, and curiosity. Even though this study focused on the vehicle environment, we know from our research that many families also listen at home together. Parents noted that there can be more distractions at home and family members may be more prone to multitasking while listening, which could lead to fewer conversations. However, the learnings we share here can be helpful for sparking conversations wherever families listen together.