iTunes U is known as a wonderful platform for finding recorded lectures and podcasts from academics and institutions across the world. But recently it’s also become a location for entire courses, with students, multiple resources and some interaction all happening on devices such as the iPad. It’s all very Apple-based, which means anyone without this hardware can’t access it and thus it remains a little elitist. BUT there’s still some good reasons to look into it – and I hope this begins to explain why.

iTunes U

“On May 30, 2007, iTunes U was announced at Cupertino, California. The service was created to manage, distribute, and control access to educational audio and video content and PDF files for students within a college or university as well as the broader Internet” (Wikipedia). UCL became an early adopter of iTunes U, sharing content such as Lunch Hour Lectures and some recorded materials from our academics. It was mainly a platform for distribution, rather than an active learning (i.e. engagement or interaction), but this is slowly changing.

iTunes U App

Recently Apple broke iTunes U from the iTunes app and developed the extension of it to run courses/modules designed in Course Manager.

“From the iTunes U app, students can play video or audio lectures and take notes that are synchronized with the lecture. They can read books and view presentations. See a list of all the assignments for the course and check them off as they’re completed. And when you send a message or create a new assignment, students receive a push notification with the new information” (Apple.com).The App presents itself like a course and in the example below, we can see Duke University example of Core Concepts in Chemistry which utilises itunes U, and a plethora of Open Educational Resources, to bring together a course which is rather unique to some, but a growing phenomenon to others.

Making your own course

We are strong users of Moodle at UCL, but we like to promote some level of exploration. We (E-Learning Environments) wish to express interest in talking to anyone interested in making a course in iTunes U for UCL, or has already (we checked, it seems clear so far). It could be a growth area for some cases, or not, we want to find out. Caveat aside, let’s take a look at how you create courses.

iTunes U – Course Manager demo

Course Manager is a simple and easy to use tool for making an online ‘course’. Sound good? The problem is the course you make it’s necessarily very educationally robust, in fact pedagogically speaking it’s somewhere in the 1970s, but it is strong in terms of presentation and clarity, so let’s presume this is why we’re here and carry on..(am I covering my back enough here?)

Net result?

So once you’ve gone through a lot of adding, it’s time to see it come together. This course I just made is alive and you may enrol by visiting the following link:

https://itunesu.itunes.apple.com/enroll/D7M-MRY-7Y5

(this must be done on an iOS device) such as iPad)

When looking at this course, we can see it’s already taking shape

In summary

This was just to take an initial look at Course Manager and first impressions are that it’s functional but not necessarily wonderful. It’s clearly an Apple product, and you can tell because it’s clean, accessible (in terms of getting started) and non-assuming. Using Apple focuses strongly around aesthetical production quality. They have not provided a system which does quizzes, for example, because they can quickly become convoluted with features (hi Moodle), or feature poor/ too simple – the Apple mentality appears to regularly be that if they can’t do it seamlessly, then they don’t do it. If you’ve ever compared installing software on Windows to a Mac then this is probably the online learning version of such a thing. In Windows you can install a LOT of stuff, but it’s complicated, not initiative and certainly not user-friendly. On a Mac, you pick up an icon and drop it on a folder, couldn’t be much easier, especially after you’ve done it once. On Windows, each install is different. In Moodle, each course is different. A critic may say it’s a little wonky – but able to do a lot. On a mac, you have a slick interface that does some stuff well and that’s it (*prepares shield*).

To finish, I think this is good, if anything its indicative to designers that Moodle, for example, could do with some more slickness. In iTunes U’s defence, it has a large user base, but a rather specific one too. This development isn’t able to replace Moodle, and that’s not the plan, but it has scope to be a part of our e-learning ecosystem (or environment as we may say) and as a tool to do more good than harm, it’s welcome to join.

Going forward?

If you’re interested in knowing more, or you use iTunes U, contact E-Learning Environments.

Had an interesting day at the rather grandly titled Apple EU Leadership Summit. It’s organised by Apple for an audience of European HE ‘thought leaders’ (now there’s a wonderful title) and timed to precede the BETT exhibition of educational technologies – this timing meant that it was very well attended by people from outside the UK. We were all given an iPad for the day, loaded with educational apps (many aimed at pre-schoolers so very interesting for me as mum to a 3 year old!)

In the first session we heard from various senior Apple people about how uptake of their products by students and institutions is growing – especially in the US (at Duke University 92% of students own – or plan to buy – an Apple laptop).  We saw how adoption rates for new technologies are soaring – it took just 9 months to sell 10 million iPads, compared with 19 years for the colour TV. Not surprisingly there was much focus on the wonders of the iPad and its  educational apps.

We heard from Theodore Gray from Wolfram – creators of Mathematica, of the superb WolframAlpha ‘computational knowledge engine’), and subsequently of the wonderful Elements iPad app, and the soon-to-be-launched Solar System app (shameless plug – many of the graphics were created by my good friends from Planetary Visions (a company originating from UCL).  I had a weird and utterly distracting experience in this session as the chap sitting next to me (Neil Powell) was sketching the speaker on his iPad using the Sketchbook app!

Martin Bean – VC of the OU – made us all laugh by referring to the deployment across the auditorium of ‘weapons of mass distraction’;  I had been switching between the summit agenda/networking app, Twitter, email, playing with the apps on the iPad, and trying to take meaningful notes – multitasking on a truly stupid scale. Bean was great, as always, showing some wonderful examples of the OU’s online courses.  He talked of the challenge that we all seem to think of as new since the ‘information age’ of transforming information into meaningful knowledge, and pointed out that twas always thus, quoting from Vannevar Bush in 1945 and Denis Diderot in 1755.  Information overload was also a theme for Bill Rankin’s (Abilene Christian University) closing keynote – he pointed out that as educators we no longer need to deliver information; rather we – and our students – need to be able to assess information. Information is becoming out of date or even obsolete rapidly; it is the models and techniques for managing and assessing it which remain valid and essential.

The day also included a hands-on workshop exploring new iPad apps. Fun, but made me fret about the need for cross platform tools.  We are a long way from a time when all students will have an iPad  – or indeed any kind of smart tablet device.  So, no matter how great these apps are for learning they don’t represent a realistic opportunity for our students unless departments invest in large scale purchase (which seems unlikely in the current financial climate).  And even if UCL could afford to equip students in this way, some students may not want to use products from one particular vendor, especially if they don’t easily work with their existing tools of choice.  Even though I am an enthusiastic Apple user both at home and work, I consciously choose cloud-based tools like Evernote and Dropbox which work on all platforms where possible (for instance, much as I’d love to use Keynote for presentations I have to be able to share with colleagues who are PC users.)

Ah well, a good day overall, and found lots of great new apps for my 3 year old daughter!