The Future of the Course (cont’d)

Posted on by Mills

In my continuing rant about the end of the course as we know it I offer further evidence. Yesterday’s Washington Post included a story about the revival of the music single in the digital age. According to Post writer J. Freedom du Lac (don’t you just love that name?) more than one-third of all music sales transactions are now for legally downloaded singles (353 million of 972 million in 2005). Of course, the full-length CD is still king, accounting for the other 619 million transactions and, obviously, the vast majority of revenue. But, as evidence that the “album” is fading as a delivery system, despite the popularity of digital singles, only a few more than 16 million digital full-length CDs were sold last year.

Music consumers want what they want and they don’t want the other stuff the music industry is trying to force them to buy. Can students who, in case you haven’t noticed, can’t live without their iPods, be far behind?

Here’s one way that this trend in content acquisition will reshape the educational landscape. Once upon a time, music consumers bought singles (for those of you too young to remember, on 45 rpm records). Then, slowly the album replaced the 45, but now we see the digital equivalent roaring back. Well, on college and university campuses professors used to teach courses and deliver lectures that were not part of courses. As recently as the early 1970s an historian at my grad school alma mater used to give a regular Thursday afternoon lecture on the historical antecedents of contemporary world problems and these lectures typically drew between 100 and 300 students.

Why did they come? Because they wanted to know something he could teach them.

They didn’t want to take his courses (well, maybe they did, but couldn’t), because they were majoring in chemical engineering or mathematics or physics or nursing, but they wanted to know something he could teach them.

Don’t be surprised if the lecture comes back–maybe not roaring back like the music single, but back nonetheless. And, don’t be surprised if these lectures also become podcasts that interested students will download and listen to/watch while working out, driving (no watching please!), or riding the bus to campus.

Will this kill the course as the primary delivery system in higher education? Not any time soon, because the course, like the CD, works for us as a way to sell content. But will it signal the beginning of the end? I think so.

1 thought on “The Future of the Course (cont’d)”

  1. Your comments on the end of the course raise a somewhat related and interesting question that I have been contemplating lately. How much do students drive/ influence the college educator’s use of technology in the classroom environment?

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The Future of the Course (cont’d)

Posted on by Mills

It turns out that what I was predicting in an earlier posting is already happening. The University of Michigan Dental School is using Apple’s iTunesU interface to provide all of their course content via the iTunes interface.

How is this changing the educational experience at this particular dental school? Lynn Johnson, Associate Professor of Dentistry says on the Apple website: Being physically present in the classroom is the starting point, the foundation. Listening to the lectures on the iPod allows students to build on that foundation.

After attending class (or instead of attending class) students can pop in their ear buds and revisit everything that happened during the day’s lectures and discussions. Because these are essentially podcasts created in real time, as opposed to in a studio somewhere, they also capture the question and answer between students and faculty.

But, you say. This means students don’t have to go to class any more! This would fall into the category of old news.

When I lived in Texas back in the late 1990s a good friend of mine was a medical student. I was shocked to find out that after their first semester, most of the medical students stopped going to class. Instead, a small group attended class, took notes, and then sold their notes to the rest of the students who stayed home and worked together in study groups. Those who took the best notes commanded the highest prices. While this system created a real class structure–poorer students attending class, wealthier students staying home and buying their notes–all of these students still had to take the same medical exams at the end of their course work.

The iTunesU model will put the note takers out of work, because all the lectures would be available for free, but the learning model is very similar. The obvious exceptions are that students can take their learning on the road (or sidewalk or treadmill or wherever) and that they can listen and watch the lectures now instead of just reading someone else’s interpretation of those lectures.

There are skeptics (see especially the comments to the linked blog post), just as there should be. Whenever the corporate profit motive and the educational mission connect, questions should be raised. But from this discussion will come some interesting solutions I suspect.

For now, the iTunesization of education is well under way.