Students get lectures on iPods

Wayne Ingalls, a lecturer at the Maine Business School, has always been an innovator in the use of technology to provide his students a broader range of options for accessing class materials.

Back in 1998, he was among the first University of Maine faculty members to offer classes online when he created a three-credit-hour course for his accounting students. About a year ago, he added video to the course Web site, using versatile software that allowed him to merge the audio portion of his lectures with PowerPoint slide presentations.

“I wanted to make a virtual classroom, and I did,” Ingalls said Thursday.

So when he heard about something called podcasting while at a conference of accounting teachers in Texas a few weeks ago, he decided to further his virtual approach by offering his students lectures to go.

With the help of Justin Hafford, the assistant director for distance education, and work-study student Jessica Stevens, Ingalls was able to convert the files on the course Web site so they could be read by iPod Video.

Now, students with the cell-phone-sized devices can download Ingalls’ audiovisual lectures from computers onto their iPods, thereby adding Principles of Management Accounting to the music of Coldplay, Radiohead and 50 Cent on their playlists.

Ingalls, who tapes his lectures in an informal recording studio in the basement of Chadbourne Hall, has yet to include video of himself for the iPod format, which can be played with iTunes software that’s offered free on the Apple Computer Inc. Web site.

“I left my head out of the picture because the video screen is only 21/2 inches,” he said. “But the next thing I’d like to do, when iPod comes out with a bigger screen, is to show my face, with a little nicer background, which would make it more personal and friendly. Then I could pop in every once in a while and pop back out.”

His portable “lecture in a pocket,” as he calls it, condenses 60- or 70-minute classes to concise 35-minute “movies,” complete with real-time sound, video and PowerPoint charts and graphs that automatically advance throughout the lecture.

“I cover the same amount of material as I would in a classroom,” said Ingalls, “and I could put about 60 courses on an iPod with a 30-gigabyte memory. And the graphics are incredibly sharp and clear. Everyone who sees it is amazed.”

Most of Ingalls’ 120 or so students still show up at the lecture hall to see and hear their teacher in person. In fact, he takes attendance.

“I still want them there, but if they don’t want to come to class I tell them to sign up for the online course,” he said. “About 25 of them have. And I’ve found that online students do as well as those who physically come to class.”

At this point, only a handful of his students are using their iPods as remote lecture halls. The video versions are still quite expensive – close to $300 retail – but Ingalls expects the price to drop eventually and that more students will get them as Christmas gifts.

While the technology may not be suitable for everyone, he said, it could become the perfect study aid for many students.

“One student said when he goes to a lecture he can’t take it all in at once,” Ingalls said. “So this is a terrific way for a student like that to go back and review the lecture, to rewind, fast-forward or pause when he needs to. And it doesn’t matter where that student is. He can take the class when he’s in the dorm room, or on a bus or even on a beach at spring break. I’m not sure that anyone lying on a beach would actually want to listen to accounting, but they could.”

While the fusion of entertainment technology and education is only beginning to emerge at UMaine, some campuses across the country have been experimenting with the ubiquitous gadgets as teaching tools for at least a year. North Carolina’s Duke University even hands out iPods as gifts to incoming freshmen, and Stanford University provides a Web site where any student can use the music and video players to download coursework.

About one-third of the 300 faculty members at rural Georgia College & State University use iPods in their class work, and the campus has organized a group of students and staff to come up with ever more novel uses for the devices. Called the iDreamers, the group is considering ways to turn iPods into portable yearbooks and to replace campus brochures with podcasts.

Apple hopes to capitalize on the growing movement with its “iTunes U,” a nationwide service that makes lecture and other materials available online.

“The technology offers lots of possibilities,” Ingalls said. “For me, it’s just something that I took to and that I found intriguing. My whole purpose from the beginning was to give students a number of learning options.”

Ingalls, who is 64, does have his own iPod Video, by the way. There’s no music on it at the moment, just three chapters of his accounting course work.

“And I had to get my 13-year-old daughter to teach me how to use the thing,” he said.