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iTunes U and Me:SPIDER SCORE Project ReportSharing Practice with iTunes U Digital Educational Resources

Terese BirdLearning Technologist and SCORE FellowUniversity of LeicesterThe Open University

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What’ll we talk about?

•iTunes U Update•Project Findings•Case studies•What about Leicester?

Photo by Sas & Marty Taylor on Flickr

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Have U looked at iTunes U lately?

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Have U looked at iTunes U lately?

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Have U looked at iTunes U lately?

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Have U looked at iTunes U lately?

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Have U looked at iTunes U lately?

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Have U looked at iTunes U lately?

Have U looked at iTunes U lately?

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Have U looked at iTunes U lately?

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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

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Do people have access to iTunes U?SurveyMonkey results: all ages, all countries:

68% use iTunes27% use iTunes U59.2% have an Apple handheld device24% have an Android smartphone

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Do people have access to iTunes U?SurveyMonkey results: all countries - university, college and secondary:

74.7% use iTunes16.7% use iTunes U65.8% have an Apple handheld device26.9% have an Android smartphone

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Do people have access to iTunes U?

SurveyMonkey results: Mauritius only, all ages

55.6% use iTunes44.4% use iTunes U44.4% have an Apple handheld device22% have an Android smartphone

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Mauritius only: If you have ever found on iTunes some educational material that you found helpful, please describe:

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Do people have access to iTunes U?

SurveyMonkey results: All Android phone owners:(48 out of 203)

72.9% use iTunes35.4% use iTunes U64.6% have an Apple handheld device

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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”

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• “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

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iTunes U: Open enough

• “Beyond-text” (Masterman, et al, 2011)

• “Open enough”

• If iTunes is a closed system, so are PDFs

• Linux

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The most mobile-ready OER channel

•Works best on Apple handhelds•Difficult w Androids

•Android v iPhone•iPad v ????•One-iPad-per-child

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Use - downloads

Use - downloads

Use – Twitter evidence

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

Use – Twitter evidence31 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

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."

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

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iTunes U v YouTubeYouTube 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

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iTunes U v YouTube“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

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!"

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!”

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]?”

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.

Case Study: Open University “well-resourced”

Case Study: University of Oxford “podcasts”

Case study: University of Nottingham “China”

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

Conclusion

• iTunes U did not intend to be “OER” but did intend to be free

• Partnering with a corporation has its negatives

• Unique sustainability

ReferencesBean, 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/