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Yes, the name for the Your Paper Sucked podcast came to be entirely by accident.

Professor Grace Karram Stephenson’s students would often stick around for about 40 minutes or so after class to talk with her about artificial intelligence. She wanted help understanding how they were using AI in their jobs, and how she could integrate it into her course.

Her students were experienced professionals — educators, business leaders, firefighters and even pilots – who want to further their leadership skills, and they brought a wealth of knowledge to Karram Stephenson’s class.

The chats were a hit, and it inspired a eureka moment in Karram Stephenson.

“One day, I said to them, ‘Since you're all here, I have this podcast I want to do that showcases your papers, and I popped up a slide telling them about it,’” said Karram Stephenson, Assistant Professor, teaching stream in the Department of Leadership, Higher and Adult Education.

“I had brainstormed papers that I was thinking about and, as a joke, because I was getting frustrated with my own lack of creativity to try and think of [possible] papers, I wrote [on the board], ‘Your paper sucks, but it had one great idea,’ or something like that, and they all said, you have to name it that!

“I said, ‘I can't name it that! I want people to take me seriously.’ And they're like, ‘Nope, that's it.’”

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On the mic, online and on stage

What followed was the Your Paper Sucked but it will Change the University podcast, a platform where students share insights from their first term paper for the Master of Education in Higher Education program.  Several episodes have already released, featuring guests from across OISE and the University of Toronto.

With Your Paper Sucked, Karram Stephenson wanted to be intentional about her guest selection. “I chose students who are willing to have a conversation with me at a good comfort level, chatting away about their topic with some clarity – ensuring they weren't going to freeze up, and I wasn't putting them in a difficult situation.”

“The papers are a mixed bag. Some of the papers are actually quite good, and a couple of them weren't,” she adds. “But it's the students themselves and their ability to tell a story that were the real criteria for who got to be a guest.”

Capturing student experiences, as well as their professional prowess, is a practice Karram Stephenson has long undertaken as the instructor of the Introductory course for the higher education program. Additionally, she had been itching to produce for audio content for some time.

“I have to confess, I really just wanted to have a podcast,” she said, with a big smile. “I love shows where women come together and chat; I love shows where people, through their discussion, come to conclusions.

“It's not a predetermined conclusion, it's that actual conversation by going back and forth and thinking together where we get somewhere further.”

On Sept. 4, Karram Stephenson will get to take her conversations further. She will be hosting a live taping of Your Paper Sucked during Orientation Week, joined by OISE alumni Katrina Persad and Trent Barwick who will discuss their first papers in their master's program, what they learned and how they apply this in their leadership roles at the university.

Persad, a member of the University of Toronto’s Student Success team, and Barwick, who works for the University’s Orientation, Transition and Engagement team, are each Master of Education grads who had taken Karram Stephenson’s course in the past.

Barwick is impressed with the podcast’s ethos and intent. “I like the way it shows the many different ways students can learn and grow within a program, even at the graduate level,” he says. “It can be hard for students to embrace the learning process, especially when they may be used to success and perfection in their studies.

“I typically learn the most when things go wrong, which may be why I was so inspirational in the naming of the podcast.”

For the live taping, Barwick hopes that folks learn more about how many different ways learning and education can be approached. “How I approach research and writing is different than others, but that doesn’t mean it’s wrong,” he says. “Two people can have very, very different working and learning styles, but that doesn’t mean either are wrong.”

Professor Karram Stephenson believes in, and is passionate about, narrative inquiry and storytelling as a way to inform and educate. She credits that passion to her Jamaican Canadian upbringing.

The teaching research profession has always had different outlets to translate findings, that Karram Stephenson’s students are administrators working at colleges and universities looking to apply what they learn directly to students.

“For [our faculty] here, we have a whole bunch of people coming through who are building careers in postsecondary education,” she says. “I actually get quite a few colleagues that come through, and we don't have an outside accrediting body that accredits us.

“But in all other regards, we [educators] are a very practical professional field, where students will take the things we give them and apply them pretty directly to the workplace.”

There is great research going on out there, she says, and this podcast can help enhance general theoretical knowledge.

“We need all of that research,” she adds. “One of the nice things [about this] is to see our students taking their research and then applying it back to their [jobs]. That is really important.”