Students Score Better From 'iTune University'

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A new study has revealed that the students who downloaded scored better in exams than the ones who attended the lectures in person. The podcast lectures allow the students to replay the difficult aspects of the lectures as many times as required. This enables them to take down better notes.

"It isn't so much that you have a podcast, it's what you do with it," New Scientist quoted Dani McKinney, a psychologist at the State University of New York in Fredonia, who led the study, as saying.

The Apple's iTune university was launched less than two years ago and offers lecture on various subjects, from Proust to particle physics to students and the public. Some university make the lectures available to all while some offer them to only limited students. According to McKinney, some professors limit the downloads to encourage attendance.

The study aimed at finding out how much the students actually benefit from these lectures. For the study, 64 students were chosen who had received a single lecture on visual perception, from an introductory psychology course.

Half of these students attended the class in person and received a printout of the slides from the lecture, the other 32 downloaded a podcast that included audio from the same lecture synchronised with video of the slides along with a printed handout of the material.

After one week, it was found that students who downloaded the podcast averaged a C (71 out of 100) on the test, which was better than those who attended the lecture and averaged only a D (62).

However, the difference was not evident in those children, who watched the podcast but did not take any notes. McKinney said that those students who listened to the podcast more than one time and took notes, had an average of 77. Subtitled "Can podcasts replace Professors," McKinney's paper indicates that these technologies can bolster traditional lectures, particularly for a generation that has grown up with the Internet.

"I do think it's a tool. I think that these kids are programmed differently than kids 20 years ago," she said. AGENCIES