Editorial: Itunes U is not an effective teaching tool

Itunes U, a service new to Virginia Tech last fall, allows professors to upload multimedia material that relates to their coursework, to become available for student downloads. Material may include movie clips, and supplemental material to help reinforce information outside of class. Professors from Standford, Radford and the University of Michigan, are already incorporating this form of education into their teaching syllabus. In fact, several Tech professors currently offer students the opportunity to gain additional information outside of class, in addition to the standard course material. We honestly doubt however, how many people would actually take the time to download and take advantage of this information. We'd rather go to class and actually pay attention there, rather than having to gain the information on our own outside of the classroom setting. We're not going to download extra supplements to the lectures, because we already sat through them to begin with. If anything, the offering of additional multimedia might serve more as an encouragement to skip class, than an extra tool, as students may feel that they can get the same information from the comfort of their own bedroom. Unless doing so would be required, we feel that offering these extra services outside of class would be unnecessary. If it is just extra material that may interest a certain sample of the class, then the other students should not be held accountable for this information.

Plus, if the information available to download is really that important, then it should have been incorporated into the professor's lectures to begin with. Unless the professor is out of town, or the material is a pre-planned supplement, we would rather have the professor speak directly to us. Itunes U can be helpful sometimes, but not often. It is definitely not a brilliant instruction tool and teachers should not make it their main form of teaching.