From CUNY Academic Commons

Overall Baruch College iTunes U Project Goals

The overall goal of the Baruch College’s CUNY iTunesU Pilot Project is to enhance and enrich the teaching and learning experience of faculty and students. Baruch will be specifically setting out to accomplish the following ongoing goals:

  • providing ease of access through mobile learning technologies (e.g., iPods)
  • enhancing learning motivation
  • ensuring increased time on task of students through interstitial learning
  • improving learning readiness and reflection on practice through pre- and post-class meeting audio and video
  • supplementing visual text-based content with rich media
  • making available pedagogically-sound iconic and symbolic visual learning materials
  • providing intensive audiovisual test preparation materials
  • engaging students in active audiovisual project-based learning
  • stimulating students’ reflection on practice through video self- and peer assessment
  • providing rich video-based case studies for intensive study in ill-structured domains
  • reinforcing schema acquisition of difficult course content using brief narrated animated videos on critical concepts

Implementation Strategy

In order to accomplish these goals, Baruch will gather existing materials from faculty, support faculty in formulating and carrying out new projects, and evaluate iTunes U projects to incorporate the outcomes into the managing of subsequent projects. We will also provide workshops for faculty, students and staff on functionality and best practices (including copyright) with video and audio equipment necessary for asset creation and with iTunes U itself.

Spring 2008 Baruch College Project Description

Baruch will work with several faculty members during the fall 2008 term in preparation for the spring to devise course lessons that incorporate and require the engagement with the rich media available on iTunes U (e.g., podcasts). The learning objectives, the media-enhanced lessons themselves, and the evaluation of learning outcomes will be aligned and will incorporate technology-use as integral to the meeting the learning outcomes.