iPods much more than a ‘little boombox’ at Georgia College & State University

Posted by Dennis Sellers Mar 2, 2006 at 7:04am

Georgia College & State University—Georgia’s public, liberal arts college—was the first college in the U.S. to incorporate iPods into the classroom as a complement to traditional teaching methods. And the program is still going strong, apparently even having a “halo effect” in making Macs more popular on campus.

The iPod program was launched in 2002 (the year after the iPod’s debut), the brainchild of Randall Thursby, vice chancellor for information and instructional technology for the University System of Georgia. He had an iPod himself and decided it had potential and a future in academics.

“He asked us if we’d like to do a pilot program, and we were interested,” Jim Wolfgang, chief information officer at Georgia College & State University and one of the creators of the iPod initiative, told Macsimum News. “What we wanted to do was beyond using the iPod in a lecture situation. We required the faculty to work in teams and connect the use of the iPod in an interdisciplinary manner. It’s continued to grow from there.”

The university secured fifty 5GB iPods for the program’s launch in fall 2002, making Georgia College the first educational institution in the country to incorporate iPods as tools for learning. The inaugural courses in this initiative—“War, Politics and Shakespeare” and “Gothic Imagination” – sparked what has become an iPod revolution at Georgia College, with many successes and lessons learned during the past four years, Wolfgang says. Using their iPods, students download class files, listen to panel discussions on current events and gather field data for assignments.

“Our faculty and students are technologically savvy, and increasingly eager to participate in our iPod-enhanced programs,” Wolfgang says. “The ability to teach and learn in a new way has driven the impressive expansion of our course list and has brought added value to Georgia College & State University.”

Students clamor to gain entrance into iPod-enhanced classes (now up to nearly 40), often offering to provide their own iPod in order to participate in classes that have reached capacity.  Additionally, Georgia College & State University’s iVillage concept engages students (even before their freshman year begins) in a virtual living and learning community that builds unity without the typical requirement of living in the same location. The iVillage is a virtual living/learning community where members communicate with one another using Apple technology and related resources like WebCT.
 
“There’s a lot of diversity in the iPod projects, which bring added value to courses,” Wolfgang says. “We’ve found that the iPodool that can go beyond classroom into other branches of campus. They’re used in the Leadership Center, in Student Life, in the iVillage and more. However, the accent is always on the learning side of the coin and not the technology side.”

Today, Georgia College & State University’s iPod initiative incorporates more than 400 iPods from almost every generation of the device. Students and faculty routinely use their iPods for more than special assignments and daily coursework. They are an integral tool in the college’s study abroad program, and the devices are part of the community-building iVillage project. iPods even enhance new faculty orientation and guide incoming students through the admissions process.

One of the benefits of the iPod is that support from the IT department has been minimal. Most bumps in the technological road have been handled with faculty and students helping each other. On the other hand, one of the challenges of the program has been dealing with the increasing number of iPods.

“We sometimes find that someone has an iPod nano when a video iPod is needed,” Wolfgang says. “In fact, some of the original 5GB iPods from 2001 are still being used.”

What’s next? The university is getting ready for the next round of iVillagers. And there are plans to expand the iPod initiative beyond the campus to other institutions that work with it.

“We’re looking into moving into areas such as alumni information,” Wolfgang says. 
”For example, we might send alumni a ‘what’s going on at GA College’ podcast instead of a quarterly newsletter. Also, we’ll be using iTunes University as a beneficial aspect of classes.”

The iTunes University service enables university faculty members to post their podcasts and have them accessible to students via the Apple iTunes Store. The iTunes Music store will interact with each of universities authentication system to protect content.

Georgia College & State University is also a 100 percent wireless campus. In fact, it was listed among the Top 50 Wireless College Campus’ in the USA 2005 in a survey conducted by Intel, according to an online article on NotebookReview.com.

Georgia College was listed among such universities as Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana, which received the No. 1 slot; Dartmouth, Carnegie Mellon, Purdue, College of Charleston, Wake Forest, College of William and Mary, and top universities around the nation. It was the only university in Georgia on the Top 50 list.

GC&SU officially unveiled its wireless community in the spring of 2002, enabling students, staff, and faculty to use laptops anywhere on campus – and then some – with the installation of a wireless card. At that time, the university was one of the first to extend wireless capabilities in all areas of the campus and in some of the students’ favorite gathering places around the perimeter of the campus.

The iPods popularity at Georgia College & State University seems to have resulted in an increase in Macs on campus.

“About three years ago we were primarily a PC campus and dealt with one vendor,” Wolfgang says. “Now both faculty and students are seeing the advantages and versatility of Macs and we’re seeing a change-over.”

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