Three Loyola professors have designed a new course that requires students to use one of today’s most popular technological instruments, the Apple iPad. It’s time to add a new item to the list of necessary college supplies.

The class will be team taught by Assistant Professor Christopher Schaeberg, Assistant Professor Janelle Schwartz, and Instructor and Writing Across the Curriculum Lab Director, Robert Bell.

The class “Reading with the Digital Human,” will begin this fall as a part of the English Department’s new concentration in Film and Digital Media. It will be a full year course, offered in both the fall and spring semesters. The first half of the course will contain an introduction to specifically the iPad, worth one credit hour. The second half will be the study of different literary texts using the device, worth three credit hours.

Chair of the English Department, Professor Katherine Adams, describes the class as a “practice run.”

“We will be just as pleased if it doesn’t work out. And we are open to good and bad results,” Adams said.

If the class is successful, it will be offered again for the 2011-2012 academic year. University officials and the professors for the course are hoping the iPad will be less expensive by that time.

“The devices have been purchased using university funds and donations, but the students must purchase the books,” said Adams.

Initially, the professors planned to utilize the Kindle in the course but opted to use the iPad once it was released in May 2010. The Kindle is an electronic device used for reading books.

Once the device was introduced, it was thought that the iPad would spark a more intriguing discussion about how the media changes us as humans and the way we learn.

Professor Adams compared that specific objective of the course to author Marshall McLuhan’s message in her book, “The Medium is the Massage”.

McLuhan argues in “The Medium is the Massage” that “the dominant communication media of our time will shape the way humans think, act and ultimately perceive the world around them. Technologies—from clothing to the wheel to the book, and beyond—are the messages themselves, not the content of the medium.”

Because the students must purchase books used on the iPad themselves, upon completing both semesters of the course, they will keep the iPads.

Kris Johnson can be reached at [email protected]