iPod® Professor Delievers Lectures to Go
When you see Wayne Ingalls' accounting students around the University of Maine campus with iPods and earphones, it's entirely possible they'll be doing their homework, not just listening to the latest music from John Mayer or Sheryl Crow.
Ingalls, a lecturer in the Maine Business School, has crossed the divide between entertainment technology and education. He has become one of the first college teachers to take his lectures to students, by creating a way for students to download audio-visual lectures to their computers and iPods.
In an informal recording studio in the basement of Chadbourne Hall, Ingalls scripted and video-taped lectures for Principles of Management Accounting and Principles of Financial Accounting, condensing 60-70 minute classes to succinct 35-minute "movies," complete with real time sound, video and Power Point charts and graphs that automatically advance as his lectures progress.
"What I like about this is the lectures are concise," Ingalls says. "I cover the same amount of material as in the classroom, there are no errors, and the students can get to it 24/7 from anywhere in the world, anywhere they can get access to the Internet, and they don't even need the Internet."
Students watching the lectures on the iPod Video's 2_-inch screens can rewind, fast forward or pause a lecture, whether they are in a dorm room, on the bus or on the beach during spring break.
"Anyone I show this to, they're absolutely amazed that you can see this in such detail," Ingalls says of the clarity of text and graphs. And with an iPod that has the typical 30 gigabyte memory, "I could put 60 courses on here," he says of an iPod Video about the size of a cell phone. "You can put 7,500 songs on this thing."
Ingalls, who was among the first UMaine instructors to offer classes online through the Division of Continuing & Distance Education in 1998, has kept abreast of technological ways to provide more options for students to access class material.
"Wayne has always been ahead of the curve," says Justin Hafford, assistant director for distance education. Hafford and work study student Jessica Stevens helped Ingalls with the technical file conversions needed to merge video-taped lectures with PowerPoint slides into an iPod movie format that can be played with iTunes software.
Other universities and textbook publishers currently are experimenting with new ways to make classes and textbooks available to students, Ingalls and Hafford say.
"We're way ahead," Hafford adds, "and if others are not offering this option yet, well, they will be."
Technology has been available for musical applications some time, and downloading movies to little iPod Video players is a more recent application, says Ingalls, "but somebody putting lectures on it - it's a week old."
Ingalls was at an accounting symposium in Austin, Texas a few months ago, sponsored by McGraw Hill publishers, when someone asked about podcasting classes. Ingalls, who had worked previously with New Media lecturer Mike Scott to record lectures and embed links to PowerPoint charts and graphs for his Internet courses, came home and went to work on his newest project.
Ingalls and Hafford acknowledge putting class lectures into iPods or laptop computers may not work for every student or every class, but for many, it provides convenient augmentation for students in the classroom and a reviewable format for students in the online class. The files are available at no cost for any student enrolled in the class, online or on campus. iTunes software also is free on the Apple Web site.
Hafford envisions a future in which faculty may assign portable lectures as homework, freeing up class time for discussion or other things. "Hybrid courses are kind of popular with distance education right now," he says.
Ingalls, who has been teaching at UMaine since 1980, says students today "have a smorgasbord of options. I remember when I used to go to class and all I'd carry was a piece of chalk and that was it."
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