Issue link: http://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/58910
Technology "NEW LEARNING TECHNOLOGIES ALLOW US TO THINK DIFFERENTLY ABOUT THE WAYS WE DESIGN AND DELIVER Putting Podcasts to Work The iPod and other digital audio and video players are the latest innovation to garner the attention of higher edu- cation. Eager to tap the technology's potential, business schools are using the players as conduits for content ranging from course lectures to school news to expert commentary. One of the most comprehensive experiments with this technology has been the iPod project at Duke Uni- versity in Durham, North Carolina. Since 2004, faculty from multiple departments—including music, lan- guage, writing, theater, engineering, and public policy—have used the iPod for course content dissemina- tion, lecture podcasting, and study support. Students were encouraged to use the device to gather support materials for their courses, including recorded interviews, environmental sounds, and biometric data. Duke's report on its use of the device, the "iPod First Year Experience Final Evaluation Report," indicates that students highly valued the ability to download course materials to their digital players. Still, the university faced several challenges and limitations in the project. The university had to start from scratch to develop training support to help students and faculty use the technology. Faculty also reported difficulty in finding materi- als in appropriate formats, and some classrooms weren't set up to cre- ate audio and video recordings of appropriate quality. Since the university began its project, Duke's Fuqua School of Business also has begun experi- menting with the applicability of 56 BizEd NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2006 obtain RSS feeds; and review video of their own work and presentations. n Richard Wilding, a pro- fessor of supply chain risk management at the Cranfield School of Management in the United Kingdom, is providing a series of podcasts for profes- sionals. The podcasts, posted at www.cranfield.ac.uk/som/ lscm, feature interviews with leading experts in the field and are designed to help busy professionals access essential information quickly. n The Stanford Graduate School of Business in Cali- fornia now has a podcasting channel, Social Innovation Conversations, available online at www.siconversations. org. The channel offers free audio of conferences, lectures, digital players for business educa- tion by creating podcasts of univer- sity content for the general commu- nity. It joins other business schools that are taking different approaches to integrating podcasts into courses and communications: n The Fuqua School recently launched its public iTunes Web site, called iTunes U, at www.fuqua. duke.edu/itunes. The site allows users to download Fuqua speeches, inter- views, and conference presentations to their digital players. n In September, HEC Paris in France issued cus- tomized video iPods to its MBA students to allow them to access campus information, recorded lectures, tutorials, and course revision materials; DATABIT and expert interviews that address the world's most pressing social and environmental issues. n Richard McKenzie, an eco- More than 44 percent of 1,078 organizations intend to increase the amount they spend on commercial recruitment Web sites over the next six months, according to the Recruitment Confidence Index (RCI) from the Cranfield School of Management. nomics professor at the Merage School of Business at the University of California in Irvine, has cre- ated 52 podcasts so far, including videotaped portions of his course and audio selections from his new textbook. He posts the podcasts on his Web site at www.merage.uci. edu/~mckenzie/ module.htm. As business schools undertake these and other initiatives, they also are taking care not to cross the line between educational enhance- ment and gimmick. The key, many educators believe, is to ensure that BEK SHAKIROV/GETTY IMAGES