To keep up with highly mobile students, the Warrington College of Business Administration at UF is providing downloadable lectures that students can watch wherever and whenever.
Eric Olson, director of the UF Information Technology Support Programs, plans on debuting free podcasts for all online business course lectures in early October. Podcasts are digital audio files that can be accessed through the Internet and downloaded onto a computer or mobile device.
Business professors already record lectures as they speak during class and upload them to the college's Internet server.
Offering the lectures in podcast form will allow students to download the updated structural content automatically every time they plug their mobile device into iTunes.
Olson said students can then access the file and play it as often as they like.
He said the previous Windows video format was inconvenient, and now students with iPods will no longer have to convert the lecture format to fit their systems.
Olson said podcasts could expand to other UF departments but would not replace traditional lectures.
Jeramy Gonzalez, a UF zoology senior, said a lecture podcast would make studying easier.
"Commuting and waiting between classes takes up a lot of time," Gonzalez said. "But with podcasting lectures, I could watch them between classes or on the bus."
