iTunes U has arrived at the Maricopa Community Colleges, forever blurring the lines between education and entertainment. At least, this is one of many desired effects. A few universities have adopted iTunes U: University of Wisconsin, Stanford U, Duke U, ASU, and now.... Maricopa.
At this time, most of our sites are private while we work out authentication and copyright issues. We plan to roll out a few iTunes U events in the fall and continue to work on developing podcasting in teaching and learning. More to come...
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1 comment:
In the field of biology, content expands exponentially with time and our classroom hours do not. Neither does the preparation our students bring to the classroom nor their ability to extract information from written material alone. Thus I am left with inadequate time to deliver essential information in my courses and an inability to expect my average student to get it from the textbook. For the last few years, I have been using a few sets of Powerpoint slides and interactive (Flash) modules to deliver the material online for a couple of fairly descriptive topics. While the students don't perform worse on the corresponding questions on the exam than when I lecture on this material, I have the feeling that if they could hear as well as see the material they might do better. Thus the notion of students being able to download audio files is attractive to me in this application. It is a supplement to classroom instruction, and my students still meet in a classroom and interact with me and one another face to face. I still think there is value in that human connectivity.
I am afraid technology could make "flesh and blood" teachers irrelevant. I am concerned that over time iTunes U and "whatever 2.0" will outsource our jobs to digital devices. I also don't think I like the isolating effect that this approach could have on the learning process. iPod seems an appropriate name since the device puts the user into an solitary "pod," disconnected from the rest of the world. I still believe learning occurs "in conversation" and with everyone "plugged in" and quite possibly mentally "tuned out" (the way that music or TV typically becomes background noise), I don't see most people really learning at iTunes U alone. There has to be a place for thoughtful application and discussion of the content for the learner to actually "own" the information in a meaningful way.
The photos of smiling groups of students on the iTunes U web pages "packages" the concept skillfully, but I am not convinced that implementation will be so pretty. During these times of decreasing enrollment, I am concerned that, taking iTunes U to its potential extreme, our faculty ranks may be downsized to such digital instructors for the sake of economics without consideratin of educational effectiveness.
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