One of these projects is Learning-on-the-Go from the School of Leadership and Professional Advancement at Duquesne University (PA). The purpose of the project—developed as a result of student suggestions—is to reach out to working professionals and help them make better use of their commuting and exercise time. The first implementation of Learning- on-the-Go provided students with course audio content that they could download from course Web sites to PDAs and MP3 players, or simply to computers, to burn CDs. As this project has continued to evolve, it supports downloading and synchronization of content from Blackboard (www.blackboard.com) course Web sites onto PDAs for students, including troops serving in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Another pilot project I (along with the rest of the world) have been watching is the iPod First Year Experience project at Duke University (NC), launched in August 2004 when more than 1,600 iPods were distributed to first-year students. The project focused on the iPod (generally perceived as an entertainment device), using its capabilities to enhance learning experiences. The project planners envisioned that faculty and students would find the iPod’s capabilities for recording, storing, and archiving audio course content to be most useful in supporting student access and use of content. Some of its uses, as originally envisioned, were properly exploited, as when students recorded or downloaded lectures from a large economics class (Econ 51) and when German, Spanish, and Turkish language instructors designed-in the use of iPods for language auditory practice and production.

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