Students Enhance Courses Digitally

Seattle—Why should professors do all the work of course design? At Connecticut College, they put the power in the hands of students.

At Educause 2007, the education-technology conference, Chris Penniman, the college’s director of instructional technology, reported what happened when students in some courses were turned loose with iPods and digital cameras.

In a freshman psychology seminar, “Identity: Psychological and Literary Perspectives,” students used the digital devices to conduct audio and video interviews to convey concepts of identity.

“We don’t have hard measures of results,” says Ms. Penniman, “because we didn’t have one course without iPods and one course with them. So we couldn’t do comparisons.” She did have student evaluations, however. Most students said the technology had engaged them more deeply in the subject. They added, however, that they could have used more guidance on using the devices to meet the needs of the course.

In an introductory Russian course, students were given iPods loaded not just with language-lab lessons, but also with Russian recordings of newscasts, folk-tale readings, songs, and music videos. The instructor reported that students scored higher on listening comprehension and speaking tests than did students in previous years.

The students, not surprisingly, wanted to keep their gadgets after the course was over. —Josh Fischman