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SPECIAL DOUBLE FEATURE! Academic MP3s >> Is It iTime Yet?
2/28/2006
iPod Project: The Duke Experience
As mentioned earlier, Duke University’s first experiment with campus use of the iPod began with the incoming class in Fall 2004. The school spent in excess of $500,000, giving an iPod and a recorder accessory to each of its 1,650 incoming freshmen and a handful of faculty members. The giveaway generated substantial publicity for the school, but it also attracted challenges and criticism from inside and outside the campus.
An editorial in the Feb. 28, 2005 issue of The Chronicle, Duke’s independent daily, commented on the lack of actual academic use of the iPods. Declaring the program a failure, the editor wrote: “This semester [Spring 2005], only 17 classes are using the iPod. Some of these courses, such as music classes and foreign language classes, have done a good job of integrating the iPod into academics. However, since only 17 classes are using the iPod, the majority of the freshmen who received free iPods are not using them academically in the classroom.” The editorial suggested that Duke had planned and prepared poorly for the program. “Not all professors received sufficient training and therefore some were ill-equipped to use the iPods in their classes.”
Dayton’s CIO Thomas Skill was an early critic of the program. Skill agreed with the editorial’s concerns, and noted that his original doubt about doing a pilot using an entire class had been proven accurate. Nevertheless, “I was tagged as the critic of iPods, and got hate mail,” he admitted. “The irony is that I was not as much a critic of iPods as I was critical of Duke’s idea of conducting a pilot with the entire class. I have an iPod myself, and I download podcasts and spend hours listening to things as I travel.”
Duke’s Center for Instructional Technology conducted a comprehensive evaluation of the school’s program and published the June 2005 report, “Duke University iPod First-Year Experience” (cit.duke.edu/pdf/ipod_initiative_04_05.pdf). The evaluation identified five major categories of academic iPod usage by the faculty, including course content dissemination, classroom recording, field recording, study support (via repeated listening to audio content), and file storage and transfer. Of these, it was found that the highest levels of student and faculty interest were focused on the ability to use the iPod’s digital recording functionality.
On the positive side, the study found that the portability of the iPod and its contents contributed to reduced dependence on physical materials and access to library and lab resources. Students and faculty found the iPod an effective and easy-to-use tool for recording a variety of activities, including discussions, labs, field research, and oral assignments. Sixty percent of the first-year students reported using the iPod for academic recording.
The evaluation also acknowledged substantial challenges encountered in the course of the first-year program. Major issues included content storage and access, procurement of licenses for copyrighted material, lack of instructor tools for content preparation, limited documentation and training resources, and a lack of awareness or accurate knowledge of iPod functionality among faculty and students.
“Duke was very open in the final report,” said Skill. “There were pockets of success and some real strengths in using the iPod, and there were some areas where there was weakness. But as a universal tool for all students all the time, I think that the experiment proved that in their situation, it didn’t pan out that way.” Still, the University of Dayton is supporting the use of iPods on campus, and Skill stresses the importance of getting the faculty on board as early as possible. “Our eLearning coordinator is also the director of faculty development. It’s his responsibility to make sure that if we’re doing something with technology, there is a program in place to get faculty and students involved and committed to it from the start. For example, we did a program for faculty on integrating podcasting into courses. We started out with six faculty members, and now we have 20 or 30 who are actively using it in their courses.”
And Now, iTunes U
Late-breaking news as we go to press…
Apple’s (www.apple.com)
recently launched iTunes U may put a fast end to many of the iPod initiative
challenges that administrators, faculty, and students are facing on campus.
Based on the iTunes Music Store (that every campus kid knows how to access
and use to its full potential), the new “U” is a free, hosted service for
colleges and universities built around the now ubiquitous iPod; Apple spokespeople
say it provides easy 24/7 access to an institution’s educational content—including
lectures and interviews. Users can download content to Macs and PCs no matter
where they are; they can listen and view on a computer screen, or transfer
content to the iPod, and then go! Apple claims iTunes U is an end-to-end solution
that is easy for users to learn, and easy for technologists to administer.
It also boasts one-click iPod support, as well as integrated podcasting support.
Now, there’s little to keep a campus from jumping on the iPod bandwagon. Score
another hit for Steve Jobs.
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