Education

“We wanted to get digital content together in a form that would be easy to access and manage. iTunes U…made that possible for us.”

Dr. Victoria Szabo, Academic Technology Manager, Office of the Provost for Undergraduate
Education, Stanford University

Stanford on iTunes U: Revolutionizing Curriculum and Communications

Palo Alto, CA - In April of 2005, Stanford University joined a select group of pioneers. As a founding member of the Apple Digital Campus Exchange, the university began exploring a future in which pervasive computing and the use of devices such as iPod would play a significant role in education. Soon after, the university launched its “Stanford on iTunes” initiative, which gave users an easy way to access rich digital materials. Now, Stanford on iTunes U offers a wealth of audio and video content to the university’s academic community worldwide.

Stanford on iTunes U first got underway when Stanford’s Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education began exploring the possibility of delivering course content to students via an iTunes site. Soon after, the Office of University Communications recognized the potential to deliver recorded lectures and other campus events to alumni and the general public through an iTunes U site. Given the university’s enormous repository of content, this new medium immediately proved invaluable in keeping the Stanford community connected.

“Time-based media, such as audio and video content, wasn’t really being handled well here,” says Dr. Victoria Szabo, who serves as academic technology manager in the vice provost’s office. “We wanted to get digital content - such as film, music, and other genres - together in a form that would be easy to access and manage. iTunes U offers an environment that made that possible for us.”

Cross-Platform Support Key

Although Stanford has no pervasive computing requirement, almost every student owns either a Mac or a PC. Thus, when university administrators began looking at making digital content available to faculty and students through iTunes U, they knew that supporting all users’ platform of choice would be critical.

“The cross-platform compatibility of iTunes U was the thing that made it seem like it would work for us,” Szabo confirms. “The option of setting up podcasting options, so that subscribers could have content automatically downloaded to their computers, was really attractive as well.”

A Successful Test of Concept

In undergraduate courses at Stanford, faculty members often use digital resources to supplement their course materials. Such resources are particularly popular in a large lecture course, where the distribution of lecture notes and slides is a common way to reinforce learning. Before the iTunes U initiative, professors placed this content in Stanford’s course management system, linked to it on their personal websites, and referred students to library reserves for additional media content. This required students to go to multiple places to retrieve the necessary information - until the iTunes U initiative, no centralized repository of digital files existed.

“We picked the Introduction to the Humanities for our pilot because the courses depend heavily on the lecture format, and because the idea of having recorded lectures available to the teaching team and students was extremely attractive to both,” notes Szabo. “iTunes U made it so much easier to access and manage course content than the other methods we’d used.

“After seeing the success of iTunes U in our Humanities courses, the initiative quickly spread to our music department and other programs,” Szabo adds. “Now faculty members in our drama, history, writing, and biomedicine departments are very interested in iTunes U.”

Objectives

Organize and manage digital content
Make content easily available to alumni, students, faculty, and public

Solutions

Two university-branded iTunes U sites

Results

iTunes U enables hassle-free management and distribution of content to multiple audiences
Users can access digital content regardless of computing platform
Content can be repurposed for later use

Advice to Other Universities

Before launching an iTunes initiative, talk to your faculty. Find out how they’re using digital media, and what their specific needs are.
Early on, communicate your content management roadmap to all departments. This will be useful in dealing with a wide range of requests and content formats.
Once you have a base of successful users, your initiative will grow organically.