Useful pedagogical tool or distracting toy? The use of iPod Touch in the classroom

Background/Question/Methods

New technologies can be great pedagogical tools or can be distracting and interfere with teaching and learning in the classroom.  An effective way to evaluate the usefulness of any tool is to test the use and assess the results.  Roanoke College is selective liberal arts college with 2,000 students in southwestern Virginia.  In 2009-2010 academic year, our information technology department (IT) conducted The Roanoke Touch Project funded by a grant from Arthur Vining Davis.  The 35 faculty participants were each given an iPod Touch and attended monthly meetings.  IT had two goals for the faculty participants: 1) identify downloadable applications (apps) that could be used in the classroom and 2) identify ways the device could increase faculty productivity.  Additionally, four members of the Biology Department (an ecologist, a molecular geneticist, a plant biologist, and a developmental biologist) combined efforts to find and evaluate apps for use in college-level biology courses. We categorized apps into functional groups: field guides, tools, encyclopedias, calculators, and tutorials.  We evaluated their utility based on accuracy, appropriate level, ease of use, and price.  We developed a central database to list those applications along with our evaluation.

Results/Conclusions

The assessment results that IT collected demonstrated that most faculty found useful teaching apps.  The results were more mixed for the productivity goal.  Some faculty found and used productivity functions (e.g., email function and scheduling apps).  Nonetheless, a surprising proportion of the faculty did not try these productivity functions.  For the biology apps analyses, we found that the usefulness of most apps was hindered by limited ability to project the iPod Touch screen in the classroom.  The some of the most useful apps worked in lab settings, as tools to engage students in a topic, or as a study tool for students on their own smart devices.  In conclusion, we all found ways to enhance our teaching with the iPod Touch, but this tool did not replace any technology that we are already using.