Duke Does it Again

Exciting Technology for Students

External Link

Duke has long been one of my favorite universities. While in high school I had the opportunity to attend classes at Duke as part of a summer studies program, and I enjoyed my time there immensely. When the time came to choose a college, Duke was near the top of my list, but I did not have the finances or the scholarship earning ability to attend. I ended up really enjoying the university I did attend, but recent news from Duke almost makes me wish I were a high school senior all over again.

Duke is giving Apple iPods to all first-year students. The iPods will be loaded with Duke-related content. This includes freshman orientation information, course content provided by faculty, information about the academic calendar, recorded lectures, language lessons, and more.

This is, in my opinion, a great idea. I was involved with a couple research projects studying the impact of technology on education when I was a university Lecturer. Our main tools for those studies were laptop computers and wired classrooms. For a Computer Science Lecturer, these tools were a great help in teaching.

When I first started teaching I had a series of slides covering the material. I would show the slides and discuss the contents. This was boring as hell. I quickly progressed to using the slides as lecture notes, and doing a dynamic lecture on the material. I was better able to engage my students with this methodology. But my best results came when I was given a computer, projector, and a wired classroom.

Suddenly I was able to talk about a subject, for example the for loop in C, and then show my students how it can be used in an actual program. I could write it, compile it, and run it with all of them observing via the overhead projector. When a student would ask me, “What happens if you do such-and-such.” I could actually show them. With their laptops and the wired class room they could download my lecture notes and examples, and perform experiments themselves.

These tools were useful to my students, but I’m not sure if the usefulness would be widespread over the university. Duke’s approach at technology and education has a universal appeal. Because this is essentially a media-presentation device, there are a great many ways that the technology can be useful.

"We're approaching this as an experiment, one we hope will motivate our faculty and students to think creatively about using digital audio content and a mobile computing environment to advance educational goals in the same way that iPods and similar devices have had such a big impact on music distribution," said Tracy Futhey, vice president for information technology. "We think the power and flexibility of these devices offer some real advantages over other media used to distribute educational content such as CD-ROMs and DVDs."

Lynne O'Brien, director of Duke's Center for Instructional Technology (CIT), had the following to add.

"The iPod project will encourage faculty to experiment with adding elements such as music, foreign language and poetry to class curricula," she said. O'Brien cited as an example the elementary Spanish course taught by visiting assistant professor Lisa Merschel. Students in that course will use the iPods to listen to audio examples of textbook exercises, hear Spanish songs and record their own efforts to speak Spanish. In another course on environmental ethics, taught by adjunct professor Sally Schauman, students will use their iPods to record lectures and, while in the field, take notes and record interviews.

This is an exciting time to be alive.

Locked Post

Advanced Search

Watch this post

Do not email me updates for this post Email me updates for this post