It started with a simple question. First-year dental student Jared Van Ittersum wanted to know why all the lectures he attended also weren’t available electronically.
Now, the School of Dentistry and Apple Computer, Inc. are collaborating on a project that uses iTunes technology for academics. The school is posting audio of large lecture classes online for download by registered U-M dental students, and uses RSS—a Web syndication method—to send instructional content to students automatically.
John Couch, Apple vice president for education, visited the school last week for a celebration of the program. A demonstration displayed a custom iTunes site for the Dental School, which offers lectures in a “music store” listing. Students who log in can preview audio of a lecture, download an individual lecture, or subscribe for automated delivery to their computers and MP3 players.
Lynn Johnson, director of dentistry informatics and information technology, says the partnership represents a major shift in how technology is used in teaching.
Duke University created a buzz when it spent $500,000 to give every incoming freshman an iPod in 2004. Johnson says the University’s process is the direct opposite of Duke’s—U-M’s efforts started with a student need and ended with a technology, while Duke established its iPod program and encouraged faculty to incorporate it into their pedagogy.
Starting in fall 2004, Johnson worked with students to test different approaches. Dental informatics staff posted lectures in three formats: video with audio, PowerPoint files with audio, and audio files alone. Then Johnson and her colleagues watched download traffic to see what students used.
To Johnson’s surprise, audio was most popular. She found students were listening to lectures on the move; exercising at the Central Campus Recreation Building, for example, rather than sitting at a desk taking notes.
“I guess I’m the Richard Simmons of the academic world. They’re all sweating to the oldies,” says Dennis Lopatin, senior associate dean of dentistry, who was the first faculty member to participate in recording experiments.
Van Ittersum, now a second-year dental student, said because of the course load of the graduate program students must use every spare moment wisely. He has recognized material on tests as content he freshly reviewed on his way to class.
About half of the participating students used an RSS reader to subscribe to the content. RSS automatically can download recently posted lectures to students’ computers, convert them to an AAC file that they can bookmark, and load files onto their iPods or other audio players. This technique of sending MP3 files out sometimes is called “podcasting,” taking its name from the Apple MP3 player.
James Hilton, associate provost for academic, information and instructional technology affairs, says the University’s approach is to provide the means to let others tap in to good ideas developed throughout campus. He hopes it will be easy to take dentistry’s standalone system and integrate it into C-Tools if other schools and colleges want to try it.
“We want central IT to respond quickly so schools and colleges can experiment with new initiatives and get the support they need,” he says.
Hilton says the dentistry-Apple collaboration is an example of exactly how he hopes technology would work at U-M.
“Finding ways to capitalize on the energy and creativity of students who have been raised in a very different technological space and who have a very demanding set of expectations—this is a happy story of how that enriches teaching,” Hilton says.
