This presentation was delivered at the Open University, Milton Keynes, UK, on 24 November, 2011, as a final report of my SCORE project entitled SPIDER. It covers everything I learned which I could jam into 30 minutes!

1. iTunes U and Me:
SPIDER SCORE Project Report
Sharing Practice with iTunes U Digital Educational Resources
Terese Bird
Learning Technologist and SCORE Fellow
University of Leicester
The Open University
www.le.ac.uk

2. What’ll we talk about?
•iTunes U Update
•Project Findings
•Case studies
•What about Leicester?
Photo by Sas& Marty Taylor on Flickr
www.le.ac.uk

3. Have U looked at iTunes U lately?
www.le.ac.uk

4. Have U looked at iTunes U lately?
www.le.ac.uk

5. Have U looked at iTunes U lately?
www.le.ac.uk

6. Have U looked at iTunes U lately?
www.le.ac.uk

7. Have U looked at iTunes U lately?
www.le.ac.uk

8. Have U looked at iTunes U lately?
Have U looked at iTunes U lately?
www.le.ac.uk

9. Have U looked at iTunes U lately?
www.le.ac.uk

10. Investigation by Social Media:
impact and usage
•Baseline: access to iTunes U (SurveyMonkey N=203)
•Usage (Twitter, Weibo)
•TwapperKeeper – archive of tweets
•Blog – findings, essays, discussion
•Scoop.it – hot news, discussion
www.le.ac.uk

11. www.le.ac.uk

12. Do people have access to iTunes U?
SurveyMonkey results: all ages, all countries:
68% use iTunes
27% use iTunes U
59.2% have an Apple handheld device
24% have an Android smartphone
www.le.ac.uk

13. Do people have access to iTunes U?
SurveyMonkey results: all countries - university,
college and secondary:
74.7% use iTunes
16.7% use iTunes U
65.8% have an Apple handheld device
26.9% have an Android smartphone
www.le.ac.uk

14. Do people have access to iTunes U?
SurveyMonkey results: Mauritius only, all ages
55.6% use iTunes
44.4% use iTunes U
44.4% have an Apple handheld device
22% have an Android smartphone
www.le.ac.uk

15. Mauritius only: If you have ever found
on iTunes some educational material
that you found helpful, please describe:
www.le.ac.uk

16. Do people have access to iTunes U?
SurveyMonkey results: All Android phone owners:
(48 out of 203)
72.9% use iTunes
35.4% use iTunes U
64.6% have an Apple handheld device
www.le.ac.uk

17. iTunes U: Disputed channel of OER
•Only a small percentage are licensed for reuse
(Oxford, Glamorgan, Yale, MIT, UC Irvine…)
•“iTunes is a locked system and I will therefore
never use it. I don't believe audio lectures
which exist in iTunes are OER as the platform
itself is a closed system”
www.le.ac.uk

18. •“OER are teaching, learning, and research resources
that reside in the public domain or have been released
under an intellectual property license that permits their
free use or re-purposing by others.” (Hewlett
Foundation, 2007)
•OER are teaching and learning materials that you may
freely use and reuse, without charge. (OER Commons)
•Yuan, et al referred to iTunes U as an OER Channel in
a JISC CETIS paper
www.le.ac.uk

19. iTunes U: Open enough
•“Beyond-text” (Masterman, et al, 2011)
•“Open enough”
•If iTunes is a closed system, so are PDFs
•Linux
www.le.ac.uk

20. The most mobile-ready OER channel
•Works best on Apple
handhelds
•Difficult w Androids
•Android viPhone
•iPadv ????
•One-iPad-per-child
Photo by superkimbo on Flickr
www.le.ac.uk

21. Use - downloads

22. Use - downloads

23. Use – Twitter evidence

24. Use – Twitter evidence - Themes
Theme Example
Series Excellent videos to review Clinical Anatomy from Stanford
University, presented by R.Snell. Fifteen episodes downloadable
free from iTunesU.
@cells_nnm new lectures on iTunesU this winter. Story about the
class here: http://t.co/IuZ
Addictive TunesU courses downloaded into the iPad = life is good.
Dear iTunes, you are full of bloat but your collection of awesome
lectures on iTunesU is both brilliant and addictive
I have just discovered iTunesU...my life is now complete.
The good: I haven't use iTunes in over a week! The bad: I am
craving some iTunesU lectures…
#iTunesU #VamosAqui

25. Use – Twitter evidence
31 Aug – 7 Sept iTunes U tweets
Language No. of Tweets Language No. of Tweets
English 155 Portuguese 3
Japanese 52 Croatian 2
French 34 Indonesian 2
Spanish 15 Russian 2
Turkish 5 China 1
German 3 Dutch 1
Norwegian 3 Korean 1
Polish 3 Slovak 1

26. Reuse – use in teaching
Tweets: 6% specific teaching use
"We're looking @ iTunesU&podcasts in the #csci101
class today. Here's a good one. TED - TEDTalks
(video) - http://itun.es/i6X5Jh #iTunes”
"itunesU? Pick a lecture that matches up with my class
content & have students take notes during lecture.”
"iTunesU YES! Excellent Idea! Thanks – I always forget
about that nifty tool."

27. Reuse – tips
• On a Mac or PC, retrieve an iTunes U file from your
hard drive – iTunes Media folder
• Can import iTunes U videos into iMovie to edit
• To link to a file within iTunes, left-click and select
Copy Link as below. When user clicks on link, iTunes
will launch or they will be prompted to download
iTunes

28. iTunes U vYouTube
YouTube iTunes U
Ease to publish Easy Not so easy
Ease to grab Easy Easy
Ease to adapt Not so easy Not so easy
CC Catered but hidden Not explicit
Formats Video (and audio) Audio, video, epub
Academic quality Mixed Very Good
Internet connection Required at the time Not required at the time
Software Any browser Free iTunes software
Time limit 10 – 15 minutes* None
Restrictions Banned in China, others None
Restrictions in UK Schools don’t like Some unis don’t like
Mobile-ready Smartphones, tablets All including non-smart
iPods, best on Apple
www.le.ac.uk

29. iTunes U vYouTube
“I looked for Leicester stuff on iTunes U but there
wasn’t any. I wanted to see what the lectures were
like. With £9000 fees starting next year, students
are going to want to know what they’re paying for. I
didn’t even think of looking on YouTube for
Leicester lectures because YouTube is rubbish,
that’s where you look at kittens on a treadmill.”
-Leicester student
www.le.ac.uk

30. Motivation – positive (academic)
• "...when it comes to making the videos available to a wider
audience, perhaps the single biggest thing is that I like explaining
stuff, and it feels good to think that people around the globe may
find my explanations helpful.... Mixed in with this is the fact that I
am representing the University of Nottingham, and promoting both
my own teaching and the University of Nottingham’s resources
worldwide... Finally, I have had correspondence with OER Africa. It
is very useful for them (and presumably other similar organizations)
to have access to complete modules from reputable institutions
worldwide in order to support teaching at universities which have
more limited resources. So you could say it is a mixture of things
ranging from altruism through professional pride to vanity!"

31. Motivation – positive (academic)
• ”I work hard on my lectures, and with iTunes U I am reaching
a much larger audience than just those who attend my
lecture.”
• “we make our videos to communicate our enthusiasm for
chemistry and sharing helps in the communication.”
• “If the videos can help someone learn Maths, great!”

32. Motivation – positive sharing, negative
iTunes U (academic)
• “I therefore set up this site independently, and it has become
part of my academic identity. Maintaining it and continuing to
offer quality content is part of what I do as a researcher and
teacher. And I do it so people will come to my site and use it.
…I insisted that these remained on my site so that students
would use it. I've also invested in all my own HD video
equipment and digital quality recorders, as well as the
software I need to do all this stuff (although the earlier videos
were pre-digital). Why would I want to put everything I've
developed on iTunes U so people don't need to come to [my
website]?”

33. Motivation – marketing types
• “It’s the great learning material that brings the registrations.”
Martin Bean
• It’s ok for academics to give away “tasters” as a form of
marketing. As long as they are of sufficient quality.

34. Case Study: Open University
“well-resourced”

35. Case Study: University of Oxford
“podcasts”

36. Case study: University of Nottingham
“China”

37. How about Leicester?
• “Go forth and make Multimedia OER especially
appropriate for prospective students” – 14 Nov 2011
• A-V department loves audio lectures
• Adobe Presenter – mp4
• iShowU or QuicktimePro

38. Conclusion
• iTunes U did not intend to be “OER” but did intend
to be free
• Partnering with a corporation has its negatives
• Unique sustainability

39. References
Bean, M. (Open U. (2011). Martin Bean Presentation on Open University’s iTunes U Channel. London.
Rai, B. (University of L. (2011). 100th worldwide member signs up for YouTube EDU - Yahoo! News. Yahoo News.
Retrieved November 17, 2011, from http://news.yahoo.com/100th-worldwide-member-signs-youtube-edu-
143610277.html
Yuan, L., MacNeill, S., Kraan, W. (2008) Open Educational Resources – Opportunities and Challenges for Higher
Education, Educational Cybernetics: Reports 2008, 35. Retrieved from wiki.cetis.ac.uk
http://wiki.creativecommons.org/What_is_OER%3F
http://opencontent.org/blog/archives/1780
http://projects.kmi.open.ac.uk/itunesu/impact/
White, D., Wild, J., Masterman, L., Manton, M. (2011) JISC OER Impact Study: Research Report. Retrieved from
http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/programmes/elearning/oer2/oerimpact.aspxOpenUniversiy. (2011).
iTunes U Impact. Open University KMI Projects Website. Retrieved September 28, 2011, from
»
http://projects.kmi.open.ac.uk/itunesu/impact/