Last year Stanford joined the Apple Digital Campus Initiative, along with Duke University, the Missouri School of Journalism, the School of Information Sciences and Technology at Penn State University, and the Ohio State University. This core group was formed in collaboration with Apple Computer, Inc. to consider how pervasive technology impacts higher education, and to develop communities of practice around promising methods and tools.
The group made its public debut in a featured session at the National Learning Infrastructure Initiative conference in New Orleans last February, where Stanford was represented by Victoria Szabo, Academic Technology Manager for the Office of the Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education and ATS for the Introduction to the Humanities Program. A podcast for the session is available.
Stanford's Pilot Project and The Courses That Participated
Each charter member of what has since evolved into the Apple Digital Campus Exchange, a growing network of higher education institutions, has developed pilot projects focusing on a different pervasive technology resource. Stanford's pilot project focuses on developing a Stanford-only version of the iTunes Store, Apple's popular download site for digital audio content. Stanford iTunes allows authorized users to upload and manage audio content using Apple's free, cross-platform audio content-management tool, iTunes. Users of Stanford's iTunes launch the iTunes application through a special URL that directs them to the Stanford content after passing through SUNet ID-based authentication.
In the Stanford iTunes system, which is the base for what Apple hopes to develop into a product for broader higher education use, authorized administrators are able to upload and tag content into the appropriate course space through a special administrative interface. In addition to providing metadata related to the content itself, administrators can assign audio files to a tabbed organizational scheme that translates into downloadable playlists. The files, AAC or mp3 files, can then be played back either on a computer or on a portable audio device such as an iPod or other digital audio player.
The Office of University Communications and the Office of the Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education began testing an early version of the tool in Spring 2005, offering both course-related and general interest audio content to the Stanford community. This past spring, four IHUM courses (Myth and Modernity, Literature into Life, Anatomies of Change, and Poetic Justice) experimented with the Stanford iTunes store to distribute course audio. Audio content included music, spoken word recordings of class texts, and faculty lectures. University Communications put up several Presidential lectures and other resources to test out the system, with much more new and archival content in the works.
What's Next
In Fall Quarter 2005, the curricular pilot will expand to include courses in ATS-supported departments and units across campus, as well as special events connected with the Alumni Association and other campus groups. University Communications, Undergraduate Advising and the Center for Teaching and Learning expect to add audio transcripts of one-time events, podcasts of recurring events, and specially-created audio resources in the coming months as well.
In addition to providing additional Stanford-specific content, University Communications also plans to launch a publicly available iTunes space to reach audiences beyond Stanford. In 2006, depending upon the results of the Fall Quarter pilot, the Stanford iTunes team hopes to launch the tool more broadly to the wider campus community.
While the initial pilot version of Stanford iTunes relied on SUNet IDs to control access, the next generation pilot will include finer-grained controls. The CourseWork development team in Academic Computing is working with Apple to make Stanford iTunes accessible via the CourseWork interface. This will allow users who are authorized to see restricted-access content through CourseWork can have their privileges securely passed along to the Stanford iTunes system. It will also enable instructors to provide a wider range of content to their students, and will create an environment where students can safely use a drop-box feature to submit their own audio files to the archive online.
In addition, the Apple engineering team is working on enhancements to the user and administrative interfaces, as well as exploring options for implementing digital rights management tools and seamless linking to purchasable audio content.
Assessment and Results
As the Stanford iTunes team continues to refine and expand the use of the tool, they are also performing assessments of its effectiveness and are actively soliciting feedback on future development. In Winter 2006, Stanford expects to report initial results to the Apple Digital Campus Exchange on its findings on the effectiveness of this tool as a teaching and learning resource and as a means for building a broader campus community.
For More Information
For more information, or to participate in a pilot, please contact Victoria Szabo, vszabo@stanford.edu in VPUE or Scott Stocker, stocker@stanford.edu in University Communications. To visit Stanford iTunes and find out more about the project see:
