itunes u - review of australian unis

iTunes U at UTSan introduction

Overview What is iTunes U? What is being done there:

Open University Stanford Australian Universities

What might a UTS approach to iTunes U involve?

iTunes U Part of the iTunes music

store Universities have their own

“sites” where they can provide and structure content

University sites can be private, public, or a combination of both

Open University OU Learn (faculties of sorts) Recently Released Recent Staff Favourites New Content Geology Exposed Featured content OU Links Top Downloads OU Power Search Links

Not limited to formal curriculum areas – you can gather course content the way students want to access it.

Stanford Categories What’s New Staff Favourites Stanford Courses The Stanford

Challenge Featured Contributors Stanford Search Top Downloads Quick Links

Australian iTunes U pages

Overview Nine Universities so far Varying approaches in design and content

ANU

No marketing copy Links to Uni Pages Public lectures and

events Courses ANU Press Campus Life

Griffith University Marketing copy Top downloads Links Featured content Digital arts showcase Our community Our study areas

LaTrobe

Logo not very prominent Top Downloads Links Features News, Opinions and Events

(all updated in the last week)

Study Life at La Trobe

RMIT Of all the designs, theirs has

the least prominent name Marketing copy in the top

RHS Links to university web

pages Three categories:

Featured content Study Community

Swinburne Top downloads Links About Swinburne For students and staff Academia (there are hundreds of

tracks here, but lots of graduation speeches pushing the numbers up. Good use of screencasts to teach computing lessons)

Research Consistent Opening Video grab

(“Swinburne Podcasts”) helps to establish brand across all media offerings

University of Melbourne Has some marketing copy at

the top Top Downloads Links Featured News Featured series University community Media content was all “last

modified” in the last 2 days Not a great deal of content

evident from this page

University of Western Australia Topics Sample Lectures Links Featured Content Marketing copy is relegated to the

“Welcome” page – a more fitting place for such text

Appears that they don’t have much content: in reality, there are quite a few tracks buried within, and the sample lectures are mostly 45mins or longer.

13 minute long “welcome to UWA video” with high production values

UNSW Topics, UNSW TV Research Publications Courses Search Top Downloads Seems that it hasn’t been

updated much since launch Where there *is* video

content, it’s very high quality.

Lessons learned from these pages

With too little content, it appears that the university has little to say. Sample lectures can give a taste for a subject. It’s reasonable to provide 45mins – 90mins long audio (or video) To illustrate the university, use a prominent logo and brand, but also

show students, and some buildings It’s acceptable to have links back to your website Content about life at your particular university is commonplace The most interesting content to casual browsers is likely to be one-

off lectures, not whole courses The marketing benefit comes from the quality of the content, not in

explicit messages

Where to start Start with existing content:

UTSpeaks Videos of campus life Podcasts / Vodcasts that

have already been developed

Begin recording events with a view to sharing them via iTunes U

Possible sources of content C3 – Centre for Climate Change CenSoc - Centre for the Study of Choice CIIC - Creative Industries Innovation Centre CRC - China Research Centre IBID - Institute for Biotechnology of Infectious Diseases ISF - Institute for Sustainable Futures Centre for Health Communications QCIS - Quantum Computation and Intelligent Systems Business 21C

Providing Sample Lectures Start out by choosing a handful of subjects that lend

themselves toward audio/video recording with a minimum of reworking, for example: Bachelor of Sound and Music Masters of Animation Fashion

Choose other subjects based on their appeal to the iTunes audience Technical subjects Design focussed subjects Humanities subjects

• Video Content• Campus tours• Faculty tours• Coverage of events (animation festival, design festival, info

day)• Guest Lectures that have been recorded on video

• Audio content• Back catalogue of UTSpeaks events

(can include a PDF of the PowerPoint slides)• Lectures that have already been podcast for their students

Sources of Content

Create New Content Enhance the AVS facility so that audio/video of guest

lectures, events, information evenings can be recorded with high production values

Provide interested academic staff with training on content generation for podcast / iTunes U

Add resources to the Newsroom so that multimedia content can be generated as stories are reported

Engage students to generate content about University life Modify student assessment to include creation of iTunes

U content