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.