Education

Durham, NC — Tracy Futhey probably wouldn’t describe herself as a psychic. But when Duke University’s vice president for information technology first looked at an iPod, she saw the future — of education. Thanks in large part to that vision, and Futhey’s leadership, Duke subsequently launched what was then the country’s biggest iPod initiative to date: In the fall of 2004, iPod players were distributed to all 1400 incoming freshmen. The results of that early deployment helped drive the development of iTunes U, with Duke’s faculty, staff, and students helping to shape this groundbreaking method of content distribution. Now, no one needs a crystal ball to predict that iPod, podcasting, and iTunes U will become a part of teaching and learning everywhere.

Soon after Apple’s iPod was introduced Futhey began a series of conversations with Apple, aimed at fostering innovation in curriculum technology integration. Futhey saw the device’s potential to introduce dynamic media into coursework, says Julian Lombardi, Duke’s assistant vice president of Academic Services and Technology.

“Tracy recognized that iPod would allow access to rich content anytime, anywhere, and do it extremely easily,” Lombardi notes. “She helped gain support at the highest levels of our administration for this notion of infusing a new and emerging technology throughout our campus. She also realized the value of partnering with Apple as they developed an entirely new way to distribute content. That unnamed technology evolved into what is now iTunes U; something that has fundamentally changed the way we — and many other universities — now work.”

Many instructors tell us that having course materials on the iPod has transformed the way they use media during their classes.

— Samantha Earp, Head, Instructional Media and Language Technology Services

Pilot iPod Program Demonstrates Benefits

Prior to the distribution of the first batch of 20GB iPod players, Duke’s Center for Instructional Technology (CIT) began consultations with professors, helping them to incorporate new technologies and practices into their syllabi. At the same time, Duke’s back-end infrastructure was being evaluated by the Office of Information Technology, which was charged with improving and rolling out the new technical solutions. Working together, this collaborative team covered all aspects of Duke’s revolutionary classroom experiment.

Pioneering Instructors Selected

Staff members from the IT and CIT departments then worked with a select group of professors to create a curriculum roadmap for digital content integration. Jessica Mitchell, project manager for what became known as the Duke Digital Initiative (DDI), and Samantha Earp, head of Duke’s Instructional Media and Language Technology Services, say attitude and aptitude were equal selection criteria in the pioneering instructors chosen to launch what began as Duke’s “iPod First-Year Experience.”