iTunes U Graduates Across the Atlantic

Apple's iTunes Store has built its reputation on music downloads, but it could be about to usher in a new era of learning on the move. In the not-too-distant future, when you see someone transfixed to their iPod, they may be enjoying a quick burst of environmental studies or English literature.

It's all thanks to an educational download service called "iTunes U." Launched by Apple in May 2007, it was originally restricted to American universities and only opened up to a select band of universities outside the U.S. on June 3 this year. Anyone with an iPod, iPhone or computer with iTunes software can get instant access to the products of some of the world's finest minds, for free -- Apple does not allow participating universities to charge.

Enormous Opportunity

The Open University is one of only three universities in the UK and Ireland which joined iTunes U on its June 3 launch. Dr. Peter Scott, director of the OU's Knowledge Media Institute, believes this new media represents an enormous opportunity to reach fresh audiences for education. "iTunes has something like 50 million users. It has a very high profile worldwide, which will bring the OU's unique and innovative model of learning to a lot of new and different people.

"This is not just about targeting the iPod generation, we think it will attract older folk too. They don't even need an iPod or an iPhone, anyone who has a computer, PC or Mac, can get iTunes."

Most of the universities participating in iTunes U are offering recordings of their academics' regular lectures. The OU, whose students mostly study part-time, has no lectures on offer. Instead it has been able to draw on its vast store of video learning material, which is an integral part of its courses. So far it has placed more than 300 video and audio files, all taken from current OU courses, on iTunes U, and the goal is eventually to offer material from the university's entire curriculum.

'Somewhat Experimental'

None of this means you can get a free degree via your iPod: at present what you can download is not entire courses, but short segments. "It is somewhat experimental," says Dr. Nick Watson, who is head of sound and vision in Learning and Teaching Solutions, at the OU's multimedia production center.

"We have files ranging from about one to 23 minutes in length, but the average is about five or six minutes. You have to consider the time it takes to download them. Although iTunes was originally conceived for audio, the vast majority of our files are video.

"Although the files are relatively short, we have tried to organize them so as to be meaningful. For example, from our globalization course we have taken lots of short sequences on different aspects of illegal immigration on the U.S./Mexican border. Together they build up a very rich picture of a significant case study which tells us a lot about globalization."

Proving Popular

There are downloads available on everything from engineering to art history, with the most popular so far being from the OU's Everyday Spanish course. "The uptake of our material from iTunes U so far has been fantastic," says Watson. "It has exceeded our expectations." In the first two weeks after its launch the OU shipped out a hefty 1.4 terabytes of data to iTunes U users.

The OU has plans to offer additional services available only to students via iTunes. But Scott is looking to a time when students could download all their course material directly to their mobile devices. "We already use lots of different channels to get our material out -- post, broadcasting on the BBC, the Internet," he says. "The unique feature of iTunes is that it synchronizes very well with mobile devices. But we don't see iTunes as replacing our existing systems, it will run alongside them."