Apple Computer is offering a new tool for college students across the country, and the University of Wisconsin is one of the first to pioneer the new technology.
The company announced last week it would allow universities and colleges to use customized portions of its iTunes Music Store, which would allow faculty to distribute audio and visual content to students using iTunes programming.
Over the past year, this program has been tested using six institutions, including the University of Wisconsin. The service is now available to all universities and colleges, provided they enter into a service agreement before becoming eligible to use the iTunes service.
"It's the most powerful way to manage a broad range of audio or video content and make it available quickly and easily to students, faculty and staff," Apple said in a statement. "[Students] can then listen to and view content on their Mac or PC or transfer that content to iPod for listening or viewing on the go."
The service will allow students to be able to access lecture materials from their computer and review them using portable MP3 players or on the computer itself. The material will be stored on Apple servers, but the institutions will be able to control access to the material.
"You don't have to have an iPod in order to access a podcast. Any MP3 player or any computer that's connected to the network that has the iTunes software can play the podcast," said Brian Rust, communications director for the Division of Information Technology at UW.
A trial program has been in place at UW in which a small number of lectures were used to test the process. After the successful completion of this trial, UW began offering the service to all faculty members.
"We received and accepted 85 requests [from faculty] to use this service," Rust said. "They're either doing their own recording or they're asking us for assistance."
In addition to UW, Brown University, Duke University, Stanford University, the University of Michigan School of Dentistry at Ann Arbor and the University of Missouri School of Journalism all participated in trial programs for iTunes U.
Rust explained UW will use iTunes U rather than create a program specifically for UW because of the quality of Apple's software.
"They already have the format, and iTunes runs under Mac or Windows," Rust said.
While this service has been getting very positive feedback from the test program in place at UW, not everyone is so optimistic. There is a concern that this type of service would replace the need to attend lectures.
"Although it could prove to be useful for some people, it will also make it easier for people to just decide not to go to class," UW sophomore Rory Linton said.
Rust disagreed, however, as he said lectures available through iTunes U would be just another tool available to students.
"The way that we look at it is, it's just another medium to enable students to learn," Rust said. "Having the lectures available on podcast, we think, is going to be more supplementary rather than replacing the students' need to be in the lecture."
1/30/2005: Due to a reporting error, the Jan. 30 article “Apple ‘casts’ to
universities” should have stated the new podcasting program is called
“Engage” and is only in the pilot phase during this year. We regret the
error.
