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[Gerry Mckiernan]

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/Gerry

December 9, 2007
Novelties
What Did the Professor Say? Check Your iPod [ ScreenShots Included ]

By ANNE EISENBERG

These days, students who miss an important point the first time have a
second chance. After class, they can pipe the lecture to their laptops
or MP3 players and hear it again while looking at the slides that
illustrate the talk.

At least two companies now sell software to universities and other
institutions that captures the words of classroom lectures and syncs
them with the digital images used during the talk - usually PowerPoint
slides and animations. The illustrated lectures are stored on a server
so that students can retrieve them and replay the content on the bus
ride home, clicking along to the exact section they need to review.

[snip]

*Students already have an iPod and they already use them all the
time,* she said. *You don*t need to train them.*

[snip]

Long before audio files, of course, students were doing *lecture
capture* by taking notes, but even rapid writers may fall behind in
fast-spoken, highly detailed deliveries. The new technology may help
some of these students, especially those in large lecture classes.
*But it doesn*t necessarily make sense for all groups,* Ms.
Engelbert said, *for instance, in a more collaborative environment
like an advanced composition class with a lot of discussion.*

The University of Central Florida uses a lecture-capture system from
Tegrity, a company in Santa Clara, Calif., at its college of engineering
and computer science in Orlando to record all sessions of about 300
classes a year attended by roughly 2,500 students, according to Alfred
Ducharme, an assistant dean. 

Tegrity software indexes every word shown on the computer screen during
lectures in a database.

*Students don*t have to review the whole lecture,* he said.
*They can type in key words on their computer, do a Google-like
search, and open the lecture at that point.* 

Isaac Segal, the president of Tegrity, said its fees are based on the
number of students in the institution or department. Annual fees
typically run $25,000 to more than $100,000, he said. Of the 90
institutions now using Tegrity, about half have campuswide
installations.

[snip]

Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind., plans to use a software
application from Echo360, of Sterling, Va., that records lectures and
accompanying slides for replay on iPods, iPod Touches, Zunes and other
devices, said Edward J. Evans, Purdue*s interim executive director for
teaching and learning technologies. The university is testing the
program in as many as five classes this January, he said, and hopes to
extend it to 300 classrooms in the fall.

[snip]

But Professor Danielson at Santa Clara said that not everyone on his
campus was won over to the replay systems. 

*Some professors are concerned about having less-than-perfect
classroom moments captured for posterity,* he said. 

E-mail: novelties at nytimes.com.

Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company 

[ http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/09/business/09novel.html ]

/Gerry 

Gerry McKiernan
Associate Professor
Science and Technology Librarian
Iowa State University Library
Ames IA 50011

gerrymck at iastate.edu 

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