Seriously, iPods Are Educational Hopping a high-tech bandwagon that students are already riding, colleges look for academic uses for the popular music player
By BROCK READ This fall, when a freshman at Drexel University's School of Education wonders what courses he should take or what to do over the weekend, he won't have to thumb through orientation brochures or hunt down a sympathetic upperclassman. Instead, he can simply reach for the iPod strapped to his side, put on his earphones, and listen to information provided by the university as he walks to class. That's the vision of officials at Drexel, who plan to give out free iPods to the 30 or so students who enroll in the university's education program this year. The giveaway program is modeled after a much larger project at Duke University, which passed out iPods to all 1,650 of its freshmen last fall (The Chronicle, July 30). That project excited incoming students, drew the ire of some upperclassmen and professors, and attracted considerable media attention. Duke officials are evaluating the program and expect to decide in April whether they will repeat the iPod giveaway this fall. A number of other college administrators may be evaluating Duke's project as well -- to decide if they should undertake similar endeavors. Many officials agree that passing out iPods is a surefire way to win the hearts of students, and to score some easy publicity. And some say that exploring new teaching technologies -- especially those that are already popular with students -- is an important mission. But most administrators aren't yet sure whether students will see the devices as educational tools or expensive toys. A number of professors at Duke say they have found uses for their students' iPods, usually employing the devices as sound recorders with the help of microphone attachments, or as portable storage drives, since they can be used to store all kinds of large files and not just music. A journalism professor encourages students to use them to record interviews instead of simply taking notes. An economics professor records lectures for her 300-person survey course on her iPod and posts them online as a pre-exam study aid. An engineering professor has students use their iPods to transfer research data from dormitory computers to laboratory machines. At Drexel, officials hope the project will spark other innovative uses of the popular gadgets in teaching. William Lynch, director of Drexel's education program, says the university will manage the iPod giveaway like a research project -- asking professors and students to develop ideas for incorporating the technology into teaching, and to offer feedback on whether the program has a long-term future at Drexel. Campus officials declined to say how much they are paying for the iPods, but Mr. Lynch describes the project as a "reasonable but significant investment." (The model used at Drexel normally costs $349, though Mr. Lynch says that Apple Computer, which makes the iPod, has offered the university a discount and pledged to provide free technical support.) "Seeking out creative ways to use technology is an integral part of our mission," says Daniel W. Hanson, director of marketing and recruitment for the education school. "What better way to be creative than to take a piece of technology that isn't traditional but that has a lot of potential?" Ready for 'Podcasting' Fittingly, Drexel officials announced the program this month via an online audio file that can be downloaded to iPods. Mr. Lynch says that was just the first of many iPod-ready recordings that professors and administrators have planned. Professors, he says, will record lectures and then post them online for students to download to their music players for later review. Instructors will also ask students to record their own study-group sessions and interviews, using microphone attachments that will be handed out along with the iPods. And the university, which requires undergraduates in the education program to spend a semester at an off-campus job, will ask students to record "audio Web logs" to connect with administrators and peers during their time away. "We don't have much contact with students when they're not on campus," says Mr. Hanson, "but with the iPods, we're hoping the students won't feel disconnected or alone." Drexel also plans to experiment with "podcasting" -- a nascent but fast-growing technology that allows iPod users to subscribe to feeds of frequently updated audio content. Some students and other Internet users are producing their own audio shows and podcasting them, so that users who subscribe automatically receive a copy of each new show that is posted. The university has created PodPage, a Web site devoted to campus podcasts. Mr. Lynch says that professors and administrators will use the Web pages to send a host of files straight to students' iPods, including lectures and interviews with guest speakers, messages from the university's president, and samples of music from MAD Dragon Records, a university-run record label. The Web page will also allow students to download to their iPods audio versions of much of the material that typically shows up in freshman-orientation packets. To skeptics, that might sound more than a bit impersonal. But it is exactly what students want, according to Mr. Lynch. In fact, he says, the runaway popularity of the iPod was a major rationale for Drexel's undertaking. "This is a technology that is truly ubiquitous on college campuses and has a lot of cachet with the audience we're working with," Mr. Lynch says. "Because students have been using it primarily as an entertainment technology, it's natural for us to see if we can use it as an educational technology as well." The jury is still out on whether Drexel students will find iPods and course work to be a natural match. So far, students say, the project has attracted marginal attention on the campus -- because only a few students will be getting the gadgets next year, and because some students remain doubtful about the endeavor. "There really hasn't been much buzz amongst students," says John L. Dougherty, president of the university's student government, who notes that he has no objection to the iPod program. Some Remain Unconvinced When Duke announced it would pass out iPods to freshmen last fall, a number of professors -- and upperclassmen disgruntled at being left out of the giveaway -- questioned university officials' insistence that the project was motivated by academic needs, not marketing. Many of those initial skeptics remain unconvinced of the iPod's educational value. Last month editors of Duke's student newspaper, The Chronicle, urged campus officials to discontinue the iPod program, arguing that the university had not proved that iPods were legitimate classroom tools, and that Duke officials should look for more flexible devices if they want to encourage professors to teach with technology. The project "generated noise and gave the university a few moments in the limelight, but the iPods failed to accomplish the stated goals of the program," the students wrote, adding that the devices "do not seem to translate well into academic use and benefit few students." The university has responded to its critics by enlisting professors to use the technology in class and has set aside iPods that professors can lend to upperclassmen in their courses. Those actions have convinced at least some skeptical students that the project has merit. "Obviously, on the surface it's just a marketing campaign for Apple and for the university," says Max Brzezinski, a graduate teaching assistant in English. "But it can be a marketing campaign and still be useful in class." Mr. Brzezinski requires students to use iPods for some assignments in a course he is teaching, "The Savage Onrush of Machine: Literature and the Rise of High Technology." In his course, Mr. Brzezinski asks students to use their iPods to record white noise around the city of Durham, and then to edit that noise, for a study of how the hum of machinery can affect city life. It is a better way to reach students, he says, than to simply drop photocopied essays by Walter Benjamin or Theodor Adorno on their desks. "It's a definite 'in' with students who aren't necessarily obsessed with theory in and of itself," he says. For many professors, though, the technology may be only "marginally useful," says Mr. Brzezinski. This semester fewer than 20 courses at Duke are incorporating iPods, and many students who received the devices say they have never used them for course work. While iPods may make a major impact in only a few academic fields, the devices can also be used in courses that don't rely on recorded material, some professors at Duke say. "In some classes, like language or music classes, it seems a no-brainer that the iPod is a great listening device, but in classes like mine it's more of a tool," says Richard Lucic, an associate professor of computer science who uses the iPods for several purposes, including recording guest lectures for students, in a course on Web-based multimedia. The recordings, which he posts online, give students a chance to replay lectures -- or catch sessions they missed -- on their own schedules. "What I'm hearing from students is, they've discovered that they can fill what used to be dead time -- like riding the bus to the dormitory -- with actual learning," he says. "In the past, students thought that class begins when you walk in the door, and when you walk out, it's the end." Some students might never walk through a classroom door if they know they can listen to lectures on their own time, Mr. Lucic acknowledges. But he says he is not terribly concerned about attrition. "I think students are likely to miss a few lectures anyway," he says. "If we can give them a way to make up those lectures, I think we're ahead." For some courses, the iPod can be a transformative technology, not just a handy one, according to Daniel Foster, an assistant professor of theater who teaches a class on the history of American radio. Broadcasts of old radio programs like Amos and Andy, which are the source materials for the course, are hard to come by in library reserves, but by using iPods Mr. Foster has been able to dip into his personal collection to give students copies of shows they can listen to on their own. Making Radio Shows Mr. Foster has also used the iPods to help students explore how radio shows were produced. In semester-long group projects, students are finding transcripts of classic programs -- like Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar, a 1950s drama that billed its protagonist, an insurance investigator, as "the man with the action-packed expense account" -- and re-creating the episodes with iPod microphones and sound-editing software. Mr. Foster hopes to make the radio shows available to the public as podcasts at the end of the semester. Students have taken to the technology, Mr. Foster says, and the devices have re-energized his course. "By making their own shows, students can kind of participate in the making of radio as a way of understanding it from the inside, not just from the theoretical and historical perspectives," he says. Still, Mr. Foster says he worries that the iPods will spoil students. "When people say, 'This is an educational tool,' almost always it comes down to a matter of convenience," he says. "But there's a virtue in being inconvenienced, in having to go to the library and dig through things, and I don't want to lose that." Other faculty members are concerned that the devices could muddy students' already shaky understanding of digital-copyright issues. Many students probably wind up including some illegally obtained music on their iPod playlists. Professors may also worry about whether they are on the right side of the law in giving out copies of music for courses, says David J. Wright, director of curriculum innovation and e-learning at the University of Dayton. "The legality of using digital media was murky before the players," he says, "and now it's getting even harder to know what can be considered 'fair use' of media for teaching purposes." Enterprising instructors can turn that confusion into an advantage by using the iPods as a chance to start a discussion on copyright, says Robert Viau, a professor of English at Georgia College & State University. Since 2002 -- two years before Duke inaugurated its iPod giveaway -- Mr. Viau has been putting extensive collections of music on iPods and lending the devices to students for a pair of courses on Gothic literature and art. The courses that use iPods come with a warning on copyright protection, Mr. Viau says, and students can add Gothic-themed music to their machines only if they can show that the tunes were legally obtained. Mr. Viau's playlist for students in "Utopia/Dystopia: Studies in No Place" gives students plenty to listen to. Under his broad definition of Gothic music, he includes string quartets by Beethoven, Sufi music by Turkish singers, and rock songs by performers like Tori Amos and Nine Inch Nails. The iPods, he says, let students shuffle through the smorgasbord and make sense of it on their own. "Students share the music, they feel a sense of ownership over it," he says. "It's kind of intellectual community building. Students meet in hallways and online and talk about this stuff." The professor's formula is popular with his students, who say iPods give them more intellectual freedom. "Instead of being given a CD with a few songs to listen to, we have an entire musical library to find music that relates to the course ourselves," says Nora O'Buck, a sophomore who is taking the course this semester. Mr. Viau's approach is also popular with Apple, which has made him a poster boy for its efforts to advertise the iPod's educational applications. "They call me 'iRob,'" Mr. Viau says, referring to a testimonial about his course that appears on the company's Web site. "It's kind of embarrassing." Mr. Viau says his course has been a success because he is able to work with a small group of students -- about 25 on average -- and exert control over their iPod use. The iPods that Mr. Viau hands out, as part of a university program that makes about 50 iPods available for one or two professors at a time, are set so students cannot add or delete material on their own. It takes restrictions like those -- and crafty curriculum design -- to keep students in line, he says. "You have to give students very specific, targeted assignments when they're using the iPods, and you have to direct them to make the connections you're looking for," he says. "You don't just give them the iPod and say, 'Listen and enjoy.' Then, it's a toy." High Tech on the Cheap Still, it's a toy that more and more campus administrators may find alluring. Giving away iPods may be a way for colleges to go high tech on the cheap, according to Mr. Wright, who plans to hold a pair of seminars on academic iPodding for professors at Dayton this spring. By giving out iPods, with their powerful storage capacity, Mr. Wright says, colleges can infuse some trendy technology into their teaching without paying to hand a laptop to every student, or requiring students to buy laptops on their own, as some colleges have done. Dayton, so far, has taken a wait-and-see approach to the technology. While a few professors are exploring ways of incorporating the devices into their courses, the university has no plans to offer any free iPods in the near future. In fact, Thomas Skill, Dayton's chief information officer, derided Duke's large-scale iPod giveaway as "a publicity stunt." Mr. Skill has argued that Duke officials rushed into the iPod project without first identifying classroom applications of the machines. The iPod certainly has potential, says Mr. Wright. But he warns administrators to avoid being seduced by the technology until they see some hard evidence that it can make an educational impact. "There have been no in-depth studies that I am aware of regarding the use of iPods as a broadly deployed academic tool," he says. Drexel officials hope that their project will become just such a study. By giving out iPods to only about 30 people, and carefully watching professors and students as they explore the possibilities of the technology, the university will conduct a real test of the iPod's academic value, says Mr. Lynch. "I don't think this is a gimmick," says Mr. Lynch. "We're simply trying to address a cultural phenomenon and see if we can create a better way of communicating about education while we do it." -------------------------------------------------------------- Please Note: Due to Florida's very broad public records law, most written communications to or from College employees regarding College business are public records, available to the public and media upon request. Therefore, this e-mail communication may be subject to public disclosure.
