Need a quick review of last week’s lecture from your advanced health assessment class? Just get out your iPod. Sound far fetched? It’s not. Some schools, including Midwestern State University in Wichita Falls, TX, have started using iPods and podcasts to teach nursing students.

Graduate students in some of the classes taught by Anne-Marie Williamson, MSN, FNPC, are experiencing a whole new world of learning thanks to a one-year pilot educational program. When the year is up this summer, Williamson will compile a report on how the technology worked. “I haven’t evaluated that the learning actually occurs in an objective sort of way,” she says. “But I can’t help but feel that if they are excited and engaged, there is some learning going on.”

The seed for the idea was planted in 2005 when Williamson became a full-time professor. A self-proclaimed Apple person, she was tinkering with her computer when she got a notion to create some podcasts and upload them to a Web site so students could download them to their computers. “The students really liked them,” she says. “They thought it was really cool.”

Williamson kept the idea bouncing around in her head and about a year ago, got an email about grant money that was available at the college. She wrote a proposal, laying out a plan where the school would purchase iPods for students to use. It was accepted, and soon after, she got the money and a great deal of support from the college. The university provided Williamson, who records everything herself, with an Apple laptop and IT folks helped her set everything–a camera, a microphone, several monitors–up in her office. All she had to do was get the students on board.

“There was frustration in the beginning,” Williamson says. “They couldn’t figure out how to get the iPods (which the college purchased for about $270 apiece) set up. But once that was overcome, we were good to go.”

And after that? “The students were really, really excited,” Williamson says. The portable podcasts can be used to display anything–from lecture material to powerpoint slides to video clips. She points out three enormous benefits for using the technology in education:

• Mobility and convenience. Students can listen to class material in their cars, while they are cleaning their homes, or any other time, day or night.
• The ease of using guest speakers. “I can have an expert in the course with me from day one and it doesn’t matter what his or her schedule is,” Williamson says. “I’ve done this with doctors in town. I just do the recording, edit them, and years from now when we are studying the same thing, I can bring them back out.”
• It can be a great reference. Williamson wants to develop a series of little video clips that students can take with them and use in real-life situations. “They can see the dynamic nature,” she says. “I think we miss so much of that whole audio component when all we use is a book.”

The first group of students kept a journal about how the iPod affects their learning and was surveyed at the beginning and end of the course to help with the study. Feedback was positive, says Williamson. The only tough part came at the end of the semester when the group of about 10 had to give up their iPods. “Now [members of] a different class, one about diagnosis and management, has them,” Williamson says.

Williamson can also see the value in using the technology at the undergraduate level, which may help the university solve some of its issues with space in the program. The nursing school, she says, is overwhelmed with the number of applicants. Along with a lack of space, there seems to be a lack of time. “We could offer a lot of information in MP3 format,” Williamson says. “It would open up more hours of the day, so more clinical experiences could be scheduled.”

Williamson has already spoken to large groups on the technology topic at a few conferences. Next month, she’s traveling to Denver and present at the National Organization of Nurse Practitioner Faculty. In June, she’s headed to San Francisco for the Nursing Computer Technology Conference.
 
She has also started on the path toward the future, seeking her doctorate degree in instructional technology from the University of Nebraska. And does she see a future that includes the greater use of iPods, podcasts, and all sorts of technology in nursing education? “Absolutely,” Williamson says. “Absolutely.”

Editor’s note: To learn more about the technology, email Williamson at annemarie.williamson@mwsu.edu