iLearning with iTunes U?
At last weeks FOTE09 event I heard about Oxford University’s experiences of using iTunes U during Peter Robinson’s presentation ‘A Pocket University: Open Content and Mobile Technology’. “But what is iTunes U?” I hear (some of) you cry … as I did the first time I heard the word/term/phrase. Very simply, in Apple’s own words, ‘iTunes U is a digital campus that never sleeps and can be reached from anywhere’ and ‘it gives any university or college a single home for all the audio and video course materials that faculty create or curate’ plus ‘it also makes it simple for students to find and download just what they’re looking for.’
iPod/iPhone/iTunes/Apple fans might be cheering at this point but I can also hear the sceptics crying ‘what about those who don’t have/like/use iPods/iPhones/iTunes?’ and ‘why would you hand all of your content to a third party?’ … which I must admit I also thought too when I first heard about iTunes U a few months ago. However, as with many of the presentations at FOTE09, Peter Robinson’s explanation of why and how iTunes U works for the Oxford University students and staff has made me think again … hence this blog.
What I heard about iTunes U was:
- Universities have lots of good stuff to support teaching and learning but they aren’t all great at (a) telling people it’s good (b) making it easy for those who know about the good stuff to find it … iTunes U can help.
- The content can be stored on your own servers … you don’t have to hand it all over to Apple
- You can also have a web portal … which allows access to all of the resources without having to go through iTunes
- It’s free
- The audio can be MP3 and the video can be MPEG4 … not proprietary Apple formats
- With structured and guided support staff can create content to share relatively easily and quickly … and students can too
- Cross departmental sharing and working on a project like this can break down some of the barriers that may exist
- The legal side of who owns what and can share what with whom can be tricky but it can be overcome
- Marketing is a key to getting the students and staff on board … and Apple even have promotional advice for you on this
From Oxford University’s point of view (according to Peter Robinson) it has all been worth it. Here are few stats to support its success:
- 1 000 000 downloads and a number 1 hit in less than a year
- 2 500 downloads per week for popular feeds
- 956 items in 186 podcast feeds
- 90% of the downloads via iTunes, 10% via the parallel web portal
… more stats and information are available via the FOTE09 presentation or from the iTunes U at Oxford web portal, http://www.ox.ac.uk/itunes_u.
In my subsequent quest to find out more about the use of iTunes U, I came across this briefing paper from The University of Edinburgh about their new and developing presence on iTunes U … if you want to know a bit more, then this is worth looking at (imo).
So now I am going to spend a bit of time looking at the content on the Oxford University iTunes U and the iTunes U’s of the other Universities … The Open University, Coventry, Warwick, Brimingham City, UCL, Trinity College Dublin to name but a few of those from the British Isles. I could look at the content on my laptop but for a true test of how mobile my learning could be I shall download a selection to an iPod and see what I learn 
Tags: elearning, fote09, ilearning, iTunes, iTunes U, Oxford University
October 12th, 2009 at 4:39 pm
Great post… I’ve seen the Apple chaps present on iTunes U a few times, now, and it’s good to see it getting through to some people, because their message isn’t always that clear.
iTunes U has suffered peculiar prejudice here as well, partly because of the same initial misinterpretation of the service that you admit to here, and partly because, well, Apple don’t help themselves.
Specifically, that line – ‘it gives any university or college a single home for all the audio and video course materials that faculty create or curate’ – is a little misleading. It suggests that what they’re offering is an exclusive repository, rather than a slick, brand-familiar directory.
Apple’s hyperbole doesn’t help matters. When someone from Apple talks to you, pretty much every item of hardware/software that they talk about is Apple-specific. This is part of a marketing culture and brand ubiquity that has served them well in their bid for market share, but UK education providers are innately anti-institution (if it isn’t their institution), and predisposed to be cautious about sharing content, so the Apple hype machine works counter-productively in this field.
All iTunes U does is work as an aggregator, or shop front for the university content – it isn’t just that you don’t have to host with them, you actually can’t, as I understand it, they really want NO ownership of the content – and their attempts to reassure or encourage brand-confidence throughout their presentations confuses that particular issue, and plays into already existing paranoia.
I believe the question with iTunesU should always first be: Will our students or institution benefit from having audio or video content? Because ultimately, once you have the content, iTunesU isn’t going to be the destination, it’s just going to be one of the most efficient and effective ways of getting your content to its destination. But like all shops, it’s much better to have a clear sense of demand or market before investing time and energy in the shop itself.
October 30th, 2009 at 10:24 am
David Gill, chair of the e-learning committee, is keen to lead the university in this direction (of course other services are available, for example YouTube U launched recently). The problem is that Apple looks for senior level buy-in and a fair amount of content at launch, so the idea has to be sold to University Management, there’ll need to be a steering-committee, reasonable content will have to be found, IPR releases obtained, and so on. By the time Swansea University has a presence, the world may have moved on to the next big thing.
January 21st, 2010 at 12:28 pm
E-books are commonly perceived as offering great potential for learner support but also as struggling to compete with print due to poor on-screen presentation, restrictive licencing and limited range of titles offered. The experience of a group of Irish university libraries shows that, with the right combination of product and subjects, e-books can thrive among students and faculty, while librarians can create more dynamic, relevant and flexible collections than for print.