Duke University iPod first-year experience: So, was it worth it?

You’ll have to read the 15-page final report about this initiative (see my post “iPod, you Pod, we all Podcast in higher ed…. Really?” for some background information on iPods and Duke) released yesterday by the Center for Instructional Technology at Duke University to find out.

No, I’m just kidding.

Although this report available in PDF is definitely a good read, I’ll share my notes on its main findings (I’m paraphrasing here because the PDF file wouldn’t allow me to copy and paste to quote some excerpts):

• The use of iPods was integrated in 48 courses (in foreign languages, music, but also social sciences and humanities as well as surprising topics such as “computational methods” for engineering majors) taken by a total of 1228 students.
• 60% of the first-year students reported digital recording as the iPod feature they used the most (against 28% for its music database and file storing capabilities — really?)
• 5 main academic uses of iPods were identified: course content dissemination, classroom recording, field recording, study support, file storage and transfer.
• Commercial audio file licensing and copyright permission requests were some of the main problems encountered with academic iPod use.

If your institution has plans to use iPods (or any other mp3 recorder/player) for academic initiatives, you should definitely read the full report.