Podcasting with Castopod: Open and data protection-friendly solutions for studying and teaching

In this arti­cle, we show how Casto­pod can be used as a decen­tral­ized and data pro­tec­tion-friendly solu­tion to cre­ate and pub­lish your own pod­casts. We also pro­vide prac­ti­cal tips on tech­ni­cal imple­men­ta­tion, con­tent design and licens­ing to make it easy to get started with pod­cast­ing. A con­crete exam­ple of how Casto­pod is already being used suc­cess­fully is pro­vided by the Uni­ver­sity of Osnabrück, which has set up the plat­form for lec­tur­ers and stu­dents as its own pod­cast­ing solu­tion.

What is Castopod?

Casto­pod is a self-hosted open source pod­cast­ing plat­form that is par­tic­u­larly suit­able for the edu­ca­tion sec­tor. In con­trast to com­mer­cial host­ing ser­vices, Casto­pod offers full con­trol over its own con­tent, which is par­tic­u­larly advan­ta­geous for OER projects and sci­en­tific pod­casts.

• Own host­ing — com­plete con­trol over con­tent and data
• Decen­tral­ized pub­li­ca­tion via your own RSS feed
• Inte­gra­tion into Fedi­verse — direct net­work­ing with Mastodon and other plat­forms
• Pri­vacy-friendly — no track­ing by third-party providers
• License details can be stored directly in the sys­tem

Podcasts in university teaching

Pod­casts offer stu­dents and lec­tur­ers a flex­i­ble, low-thresh­old way of engag­ing with aca­d­e­mic con­tent. They com­ple­ment tra­di­tional teach­ing meth­ods, enable self-directed learn­ing and can be used for exam­i­na­tions. In sci­ence com­mu­ni­ca­tion in par­tic­u­lar, they serve as a valu­able medium for mak­ing research results acces­si­ble to a broad audi­ence.

Exam­ples of use:

• Lec­ture sup­ple­ments — Lec­tur­ers sum­ma­rize cen­tral aspects of a lec­ture.
• Stu­dent projects — pod­casts as exam­i­na­tion or course­work.
• Inter­views with experts — researchers share knowl­edge and per­spec­tives.
• Tech­ni­cal dis­cus­sions — debates on cur­rent research top­ics.

How is a podcast structured?

A suc­cess­ful pod­cast needs a clear struc­ture and a well thought-out dra­matur­gi­cal struc­ture. The choice of for­mat depends on the aim of the pod­cast. While inter­view pod­casts are suit­able for dis­cus­sions, solo pod­casts offer space for detailed expla­na­tions.

Dra­matur­gi­cal struc­ture:

1. Intro — wel­come, intro­duc­tion of the topic, music if nec­es­sary.
2. Main part — Struc­tured con­tent, inter­views or dis­cus­sions.
3. Outro — sum­mary, ref­er­ences to fur­ther con­tent, men­tion of the selected license (e.g. “This pod­cast licensed under CC BY 4.0”).

A well-thought-out script makes record­ing eas­ier and ensures a clear, under­stand­able struc­ture. Espe­cially for pod­casts with sev­eral peo­ple, it helps to guide the flow of con­ver­sa­tion and give the for­mat a strin­gent direc­tion.

Technical requirements and tools

You don’t need expen­sive equip­ment to pro­duce a pod­cast. You can cre­ate high-qual­ity record­ings with a good USB micro­phone and free soft­ware. We rec­om­mend Audac­ity (Windows/macOS/Linux), which offers com­pre­hen­sive edit­ing func­tions.

Practical tips for podcast recording

To ensure that the pod­cast sounds pro­fes­sional and easy to under­stand, it is worth fol­low­ing a few basic rules for a suc­cess­ful record­ing.

A quiet envi­ron­ment is essen­tial — back­ground noise, rever­ber­a­tion or dis­rup­tive fac­tors such as fans or street noise can impair speech qual­ity. The micro­phone dis­tance and speak­ing speed should remain con­stant to ensure con­sis­tent sound qual­ity. If sev­eral speak­ers are involved, care should be taken to ensure that they do not speak at the same time and that each per­son can fin­ish speak­ing — this makes for a more pleas­ant lis­ten­ing expe­ri­ence.

It is also impor­tant that the voices are clearly dis­tin­guish­able from each other to avoid con­fu­sion. If the pod­cast talks about visual con­tent such as graph­ics or dia­grams, these must be described par­tic­u­larly well as the audi­ence can­not see them. In this case, it helps to use alter­na­tive texts from acces­si­bil­ity to pro­vide a pre­cise and under­stand­able expla­na­tion.

Finally, it is always pos­si­ble to cor­rect errors or unclear pas­sages after­wards. A brief re-record­ing of indi­vid­ual pas­sages is often the best solu­tion for for­mu­lat­ing con­tent more clearly or pre­cisely.

Open educational materials and licensing of podcasts

Pod­casts can be pub­lished as open edu­ca­tional resources (OER) in order to make them flex­i­bly usable for study­ing and teach­ing. A Cre­ative Com­mons license makes it pos­si­ble to clearly define whether and how a pod­cast may be reused. Trans­par­ent licens­ing is par­tic­u­larly impor­tant for teach­ers who use pod­casts as teach­ing and learn­ing mate­r­ial. The license can be stored directly in Casto­pod: Under “Edit pod­cast” in the “Author” sec­tion, there is the “Author” field. The selected license should be entered here to ensure clear iden­ti­fi­ca­tion.
On twillo you will find exten­sive help for select­ing the right license. Sam­ple con­sents for audio and video record­ings are also avail­able as tem­plates avail­able here.

Podcast publication with Castopod

If you want to use Casto­pod to pub­lish a pod­cast, you can either host your own instance or use exist­ing offers.

Oppor­tu­ni­ties for pub­li­ca­tion:

• Self-hosted — com­plete con­trol, but requires tech­ni­cal effort
• Via a host­ing ser­vice — some providers offer Casto­pod as a man­aged ser­vice
• Decen­tral­ized dis­tri­b­u­tion via the RSS feed — pod­casts can be listed via Apple, Spo­tify, Deezer & Co.

Pod­casts that are pub­lished via Casto­pod are always pub­licly acces­si­ble. The inte­gra­tion into com­mon pod­cast direc­to­ries takes place via the RSS feed link, which is gen­er­ated in Casto­pod. In a sec­ond step, pod­casts can also be pub­lished on exter­nal pod­cast plat­forms such as Spo­tify or Apple Pod­casts via the RSS feed. This enables a greater reach, while the data remains on the com­pa­ny’s own servers. In addi­tion, there are no costs for exter­nal providers, as they only have to mir­ror Castopod’s data and do not have to pro­vide their own stor­age resources. How­ever, the restric­tion that pod­cast episodes can­not be down­loaded as .MP3 is a draw­back in terms of ease of reuse.

Conclusion and practical example

Pod­casts offer flex­i­ble and low-thresh­old options for com­mu­ni­cat­ing aca­d­e­mic con­tent, mak­ing research vis­i­ble and open­ing up new learn­ing for­mats for stu­dents. Casto­pod is a data pro­tec­tion-friendly, decen­tral­ized alter­na­tive to com­mer­cial pod­cast plat­forms that allows full con­trol over con­tent and its pub­li­ca­tion.

The Uni­ver­sity of Osnabrück offers a prac­ti­cal insight into how Casto­pod can be suc­cess­fully estab­lished at a uni­ver­sity. The plat­form is pro­vided there as a pod­cast­ing solu­tion for lec­tur­ers and stu­dents. In addi­tion to the option of host­ing your own pod­casts inde­pen­dently, a detailed step-by-step guide to pod­cast cre­ation and a com­pre­hen­sive FAQ are also avail­able: https://digitale-lehre.uni-osnabrueck.de/podcasting-mit-castopod/