Lectures coming to an iPod near you

Lectures on molecular biology or finance may soon be replacing the 50 Cent and Jay-Z songs on students' iPod playlists.

This fall, Penn's Biology Department has started to make lecture recordings available online for their introductory classes -- a process known as podcasting.

Director of Instructional Technology John MacDermott said that no other department has implemented a similar system on a regular basis, though others are experimenting with various uses of podcasting.

"Podcasting is just a cute name for something that is essentially a very simple practice," MacDermott said, adding that for years Penn's Biology Department has provided students with recorded lectures on audio cassettes.

Rebecca Miller, a project manager at Duke University's IT Office, however, said that professors and students at other schools, like Duke, are using the technology to create learning tools that go beyond simply recording and posting a lecture online.

Duke is in its second year of experimenting with using podcasting for educational purposes.

This fall, the university distributed about 500 photo iPods to students taking the courses of professors who are participating in the pilot stage of the project, Miller said.

At Penn, the technology has mainly been restricted to recording purposes.

"We have been overwhelmed with some of the things they have been doing," Miller said, citing the example of a neurobiology professor who created a program that incorporates images and sounds to help students learn definitions of certain words.

Last Friday, Stanford University began its own project with iTunes that delivers university-related audio content through iTunes' music store to the public for free.

This project will also include course-related materials only accessible to Stanford students.

At Penn, so far, only Biology 101, 102 and 121 have made efforts to provide online resources for students.

Linda Robinson, the instructional-lab coordinator in the Biology Department, said that about a third of the students enrolled have downloaded a recorded lecture at some point this semester.

Although the School of Nursing has not incorporated podcasting into classes, it has used the technology to deliver updated audio journals from nurses helping out with Hurricane Katrina relief this fall.

MacDermott said that few departments at Penn use this tool because professors have expressed concern about students' attendance in class if the service is made available.

However, Robinson, who also teaches Biology 102, said that she has not seen a change in lecture attendance.

Biology professor Mehmet Daldal agreed. He added that he sees podcasting as just another learning resource available to students, similar to textbooks, teaching assistants and recitations, and that it could not replace the actual lecture.

College sophomore Vanessa George, who is enrolled in Biology 102, said that she has never felt the need to use the online lecture resource since she attends class regularly.

Some faculty members have expressed skepticism regarding the use of this technology. Finance professor Jeremy Siegel, who regularly posts his financial market brief -- which he delivers at the beginning of his Finance 101 class -- on Wharton's Spike server, said that he does not feel the need to post his entire lecture online.

The sole reason he posts the market briefs, he said, is that many students who are not enrolled in his class will crowd into the lecture hall to hear him.

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