When students arrive on campus in August, there will be iPods for all—well, sort of.

Questions surrounding how iPods will play into Duke’s future were answered Wednesday as officials announced that the University will continue to distribute the devices to freshmen and will extend the opportunity to all other classes.

The caveat, however, is only those students who enroll in classes that use the technology will receive the iPods and sophomores will be expected to use the iPods they received as freshmen.

Provost Peter Lange said the decision was propelled by innovative uses of the iPods as demonstrated by both faculty and students.

“We’ve been focusing on iPods and other mobile computing,” he said in a statement, “but our wider goal is to integrate technology broadly into the teaching and learning process. The iPods have helped jump-start this process, and we plan to keep pushing ahead.”

The Center for Instructional Technology will continue to coordinate the distribution and use of iPods for all students. Those students who receive iPods through CIT will be able to keep the devices for their own use and any future courses using iPods.

Duke will fund next year’s program using money that has been allotted for technology initiatives, rather than with student or operational funds, Lange said. Although students from three classes will now be eligible to receive iPods, costs for the expanded iPod use are expected to be lower than last year, because fewer students will actually receive them. The University distributed 1,600 devices to incoming freshmen last fall.

Representatives from Apple Computer, Inc., the company sponsoring the University initiative, could not be reached for comment.

Yvonne Belanger, a CIT research analyst, said one of the most surprising elements about this year’s iPod implementation program has been how iPods have been incorporated into disciplines beyond the expected areas of foreign languages and music.

“It was interesting to see how faculty and students were able to use them outside of the obvious applications [by] capturing data in the field and doing field reporting,” she said.

Belanger noted that new functions, such as “podcasting”—recording audio information and posting it on the Internet—will be possible using tools on the new iPods that were not available in the iPods distributed last year. She also added that a group of students was developing an application to add a calendar to the iPod system.

“Student-driven innovation is very important and interesting,” she said. “We hope to create more opportunities for students to bring the outside world into the classroom and take the classroom into the outside world. Technology is the vehicle to make that happen, and I think that’s great.”

Last fall, 11 courses integrated iPods into the curriculum; this semester, there were 17 courses. Since Lange’s announcement that iPod distribution will continue, CIT has already received eight applications from faculty requesting to coordinate iPod use with their courses, Office of Information Technology and CIT officials said.

Although professors who made use of the program this year sang its praises as a learning “accessory”—using it to share lecture notes or as recording devices—Belanger hopes some elements of the iPods will be improved for next year.

“Delivering content to students was harder than it should have been. We also want to find additional ways to record lectures so that they are better quality,” she said, although she noted that current iPod recording technology is relatively “easy to use.”

Officials believe that benefits from the iPod project extend beyond individual classrooms to the University as a whole.

“Faculty from different parts of the University talk about how they are using iPods with faculty that they usually don’t [interact with],” Belanger said.

“Clearly, this project generated a lot of publicity for Duke, and we’ve made a lot of connections with people at other schools,” she said. “Communication and collaboration for different units on campus is definitely a positive outcome for any project.”