Company offers lecture podcasting

Professors of large lecture courses at two Texas universities are trying out a system that would allow them to collect money from students who want the option of missing class without worry.\nLike some Purdue students this semester and some distance-learning students at IU, students at Texas A&M and the University of Texas at Austin are testing out a service in four classes that allows them to download audio recordings of large lecture courses as MP3s, according to a Sept. 14 article in the Chronicle of Higher Education. \nUnlike programs at Purdue and IU, however, this service commands a $5 per-lecture payment -- split between the professor and Pick-A-Prof, the Texas-based company spearheading the new venture.\nThe service is meant as a study aid, Karen Bragg, director of university relations for Pick-A-Prof, said in the Chronicle article.\nIU, which currently offers audio files of select courses free of charge, mainly to distance-learning students, has no plans as of yet to install a similar system, said James McGookey, senior digital media analyst for UITS Digital Media Network Services.\n"We are always evaluating new technologies and how those technologies may be used to enhance the learning environment at IU," McGookey said. "While I cannot say that such a pay-for-lecture service would never be considered, my feeling is that we will always search for an appropriate technology that would provide equal access to each student in a particular class."\nStudents expressed reservations with the ethics involved in paying professors a fee, no matter how small, in exchange for the convenience of missing class.\n"I wouldn't pay for it," sophomore Katie Mastny said. "You already pay to go to class. Why pay more -- and to professors individually?"\nOthers questioned the logic of selling audio files of lectures to students in the first place.\n"If the recordings are just in MP3 format, don't you think students would just copy it and sell it to other students for their own use?" said sophomore Jamie Potash.\nSales of recorded lectures to students hearkens back to a similar endeavor by the Kelley School of Business two decades ago, said Mikel Tiller, associate professor of accounting.\nThe project resulted in students skipping class, he said.\n"In the mid-80s we did a series of videotapes, which were made available to students for free in the library and on local cable TV," Tiller said. "The tapes were very successful -- they were distributed throughout the country and were even translated into other languages and distributed throughout the world. But one day we had a visitor from Arthur Anderson come to see the lecture hall named after that company ... and it was not full. It was kind of embarrassing. Students were just not coming."\nWith that experience behind him, Tiller looked unfavorably upon the idea of hawking MP3 files of lectures to students.\n"In class, professors can engage their students on some level," he said. "Students look them in the eye and they can look back into theirs. (With the sale of MP3s), courses would almost become online education. There's a place for that in this world. But at a campus like Bloomington, where you have the opportunity to step out into the world and meet new people and really connect -- this isn't the place for that"