Out of the classroom, into your iPod

How iTunes U and podcasting are transforming the academic experience

MATT HARTLEY

Oct. 23, 2008 12:00 AM EDT

Between part-time jobs, football games and good old-fashioned hangovers, university students hardly need another excuse for skipping lectures.

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Enter the iPod.

Apple Inc.'s now ubiquitous music player and its accompanying online music store, iTunes, revolutionized the way people shop and listen to music. But the iPod also gave rise to the phenomenon of podcasting, where anyone can record audio and video and load it to the Internet for the masses. Now, podcasting is transforming the academic experience. Apple is taking the lead with iTunes U, a section of the iTunes service where universities and other educational institutions can load recordings of lectures and other course materials for students to enjoy at their leisure.

But if students are given the ability to listen to lectures on their own schedule, what keeps them coming to class every week?

"The question is...does it really matter if the student sits in the chair in the classroom or sits in a chair in his room? Is the physical presence of the student in the class really all that necessary?" asks Sorel Friedman, a language instructor at Université de Montréal, who records her lectures and posts them to iTunes U for her students. But, Dr. Friedman says students who listen to lectures through their white headphones rather than in person are missing out. There's no opportunity to ask questions and any student who isn't in the room won't get the full multimedia experience she brings to her teaching, she says.

Still, iTunes U and podcasting in general lets professors use technology to teach in a way they never thought possible. Some professors load students' presentations to iTunes U for the rest of the class to listen to and critique. Other instructors use the service to load their own oral comments to students' coursework.

As well, iTunes U can be used to pass out homework. Instead of spending an entire class teaching her American Culture students the basics of the U.S. electoral college, Dr. Friedman can record a primer podcast they can listen to before showing up so that once class starts, she can hit the ground running. "We've had to rethink what goes on in the classroom," she says. "We have to do things in the classroom that can only be done in the classroom. If the students can listen to 45 minutes of my lecture elsewhere, then I have 45 minutes in class to do something else."

So far, only two Canadian universities—Université de Montréal and Queen's University in Kingston—have registered with iTunes U, although other schools have developed their own ways to disseminate digital courseware. American universities such as Stanford, Duke and Yale are using iTunes U as are schools in Britain, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand.

For the past five years, Thomas Dean has been recording his lectures and making podcasts available to his electrical and computer engineering students. But the Queen's University associate professor says that since he began using iTunes U, it's much simpler.

"The feedback from the students is pretty much uniformly positive," Dr. Dean says. "It has resulted in more independence on the part of the students."

He adds: "The interesting thing was that with the first- and second-year [students], attendance actually increased because of it. I talked to students about it, and they told me that because I make sure I upload the lectures right after class and ensure they are available before the next class, the students felt it allowed them to keep up on the material and they felt more value in continuing to come to class. I have noticed a lot fewer emergency questions by e-mail before the exam."

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