FaCIT pushes innovative teaching at CMU

(NOTE: This article originally appeared in the August 26, 2009 edition of Central Michigan Life.)

Central Michigan University is looking toward expanding its teaching methods to the 22nd century and beyond as the first decade of this century comes to a close.


The charge for more innovative means of instruction is led by the Faculty Center for Innovative Teaching.

FaCIT is the university’s resource for faculty who wish to implement more digital teaching methods into their courses, such as posting lectures in podcast form to iTunes U.

“We are aware that students are definitely hip to iTunes U,” said Jim Therrell, director of FaCIT.

ITunes U quickly is becoming one of the more popular multimedia teaching methods at CMU, he said.

ITunes U is a free educational service provided by Apple that features more than 200,000 audio and video files world and also provides university’s with the option to keep the files available to only their students, according to Apple.com.

While FaCIT encourages faculty to implement different methods of teaching in the classroom, they are not trying to eliminate the traditional classroom lecture, Therrell said.

“Some teachers are very gifted lecturers — we encourage faculty to look at their strong suits,” Therrell said. “The bottom line is ‘are the students really engaged?’”

Student engagement is the overall goal for FaCIT, said Kelly Preece, a multimedia developer with FaCIT.

“We’re focused on student engagement,” she said. “The goal is to find the most effective educational means with content that’s available. Whether that’s iTunes U, Blackboard, mobile learning, the whole spectrum is available.”

A positive response
Therrell estimates more than 700 faculty members utilized FaCIT and see the next generation of CMU faculty eager to embrace different teaching methods after working with new faculty members during the faculty member orientation this past week.

Larry Burditt, interim chairman for the art department, has been using iTunes U for two years now, and thinks it is greatly beneficial to all his students.

Burditt teaches graphic design classes and puts instructional videos on iTunes U for students to review after class.

The system of iTunes U is designed for multimedia items and for students to utilize it on their iPods, Burditt said.

“The students really like it,” he said. “You go over things in class and you watch someone do it, and they think they know how to do it, but six or seven hours later (they might forget).

“I thought I would use it for the more technical classes, but I ended up using them for all my classes. I’ve got an overwhelmingly positive response.”

Students can download iTunes U through the iTunes Store.

-University Editor Sarah Schuch contributed to this report.