Album art + mp3 = flash card? The Duke iPod Experience

The most interesting session I attended at EDUCAUSE was the Duke iPod First Year Experience. Speakers Ginny and Lynne gave an interesting discussion, not only on the outcomes of the project, but also on the surprises that they encountered during their iPod experiment.

I enjoyed this session partly because of my bias towards Apple gadgets, but also because of my bias towards experiments involving iPods. I couldn’t help wondering if my DiSCORDER iPod experiment would take off in an environment where everyone had iPods, files, and media to share (oooh, would that be awesome or what).

The other thing about Duke’s iPod experiment that struck me as very wholesome for campus culture in general was the fact that the success of the project was largely “student driven.” Students started using them in classes, and profs had to respond. As a result, they somehow got a lot of professors who had been doing the same thing year after year to change their lecture formats and be a bit more creative.

They’re cutting back on the iPods (iirc), but hopefully that doesn’t stop students from using their personal mp3 players for these kinds of things.

Notes from the Duke iPod Experience Session (read on...)

Different evaluation strategies

• good to have different ways of collecting information - questionnaires hard to get rich info from
• did interviews, observation, focus groups, large scale discussion etc. to get better data and find out things that they otherwise would not have known

What did they find out about iPod use?

• recording class session
• recording individual notes
• reviewing audio material, etc.
• iPods used as case study in engineering course
• language course
• listening to required audio clips
• interviews, field notes, student performance
• spontaneous iPod moments - students don’t walk around with tape recorders in their pockets, but if they had the iPod with them already, why not use it to help them in school
• Duke’s approach to music: they aren’t interested in limiting the iPod to only academic use. WHY would they be interested in disallowing students to have music on the iPod? They don’t think this is constructive, and anyway students are more likely to carry around the iPod if they can store their music collection on it

pushing the digital agenda and changing the culture of the campus = Duke Digital Initiative

upgrading the iPod - how does the affect how students use it?

student-driven

• faculty reactions to student use of iPods
• faculty did NOT find that lecture attendance decreased significantly with recorded lectures
• their openness towards p2p (responsible use, etc.) against closing off p2p and forcing students to use stuff like Ruckus — interesting.