In a new report, administrators at Duke University have found that the institution’s much-publicized iPod giveaway had educational merit, but not in every course.
The report, based on a study by Duke’s Center for Instructional Technology, tracks the university’s yearlong experiment with the popular digital devices, which were passed out to all of its 1,650 freshmen in the fall. When campus officials announced the project, they argued that iPods could help invigorate the university’s academic life (The Chronicle, July 30).
But some skeptics have derided the giveaway as a gimmick, noting that Apple’s palm-size digital-music player has become very popular among high-school and college students.
Over the year, officials at the technology center interviewed students and professors about their iPod use, held focus groups with freshmen and faculty members, and sat in on a number of courses that incorporated the devices. The center’s report, released this month, argues that the project does in fact have instructional merit. But it also acknowledges some of the iPod’s academic limitations.
The iPods were used widely as academic tools, according to the study: Seventy-five percent of freshmen surveyed said they used the devices for at least one course, either for in-class activities or independent work. And almost 50 courses, with a total of more than 1,200 students, made use of the technology. Courses with iPods cut through a wide range of disciplines, including language, economics, and engineering.
The devices’ most popular use was for recording lectures, interviews, and other material. Each freshman received a small voice-recording tool along with the iPod, and 60 percent of the students surveyed said they had used their recorders for a class.
Convenient, But Limited
Some students quoted in the report said the digital-recording technology enabled them to replay important passages from lectures on their own time. But one student complained that the iPod project “gives the message that coming to lecture or paying attention is not important because everything will be online later anyway.”
Only 28 percent of the students said they had used the iPods’ hard drives as storage devices. In addition, a relatively small number of courses expected students to listen to music or other recordings stored on the iPods -- in part, the report says, because some copyright owners were “unwilling to extend licensing agreements” that would let students download the course materials.
From the faculty point of view, the iPods’ chief assets are their convenience, portability, and ease of use, the report says. Several professors successfully built iPods into their courses even though they had no track record of dabbling with classroom technology, the study found.
But the devices serve only a small range of purposes, professors said. Some pointed out that iPods cannot combine audio and text in a meaningful fashion, and others said that voice recordings made on the devices were not of good quality. The report also notes that some personal-computer users felt there was insufficient documentation on how they should use the gadgets.
Campus officials have already announced that Duke will scale back its iPod giveaway next year: Instead of handing iPods to all freshmen, Duke will give them only to students who enroll in courses that put the devices to substantial use.
The report is available on the university’s Web site (http://www.duke.edu/ipod).
http://chronicle.com Section: Information Technology Volume 51, Issue 43, Page A28
