University Connects Whiteboards and iTunes

The days of dusty chalkboards are gone in academia, with whiteboard technology and wireless Web access sitting front and center and distance learning comfortably settled in as well.

So it’s little surprise that more technology is moving in as universities step up the technology integration when it comes to teaching and learning. One is Vanderbilt University Library, which is advancing the use of multimedia course content by integrating Apple iTunes U with its Blackboard Learn environment.

The combination lets faculty and students access audio, video and other multimedia content from the iTunes U within existing courses by using existing logins through the Blackboard Learn platform. For Vanderbilt students the "public" resources on iTunes U now include campus news, music, sports and special events. All of the content can be accessed on PCs as well as mobile devices.

iTunes U is part of Apple’s Store, providing free educational media available to students, teachers, and learners. It houses 175,000 educational audio and video files.

Vanderbilt is following in the steps of State University of New York at Brockport which developed a similar application. According to educational leaders the demand for better access to multimedia content propelled the technology adoption.

"We found that an increasing number of faculty wanted to use multimedia in their classes, from capturing lectures to developing and sharing multimedia presentations for students," said Cindy Franco, Online Access to Knowledge Manager at Vanderbilt, in a release. "We looked at a number of solutions but they all had limitations. Working with iTunes U gave us an efficient way to share content within our existing system and tied to our courses so faculty and students can use it easily."

College officials said the integration of tools is not limited to classroom content.

"We started this integration to meet the need of students and teachers to have access to multimedia content that was being created to expand the traditional course curriculum," said Brendan Post, Learning Systems Team Leader at Brockport. "Interest grew beyond our campus, which validated for us the importance of being part of a larger community. We hope this effort will enable collaboration between institutions to broaden our content offerings in the near future."

(Photo courtesy Wikimedia Commons)