Free intellect

iTunes U essentially offers free self-education to anyone.

Want some? Apple is expensive, yadda yadda yadda, but it might surprise some of you that there's also a lot Apple has done on your behalf to furnish goodness completely free.

And I don't mean just the weekly free song on iTunes (this week: You Tore My Heart Out, by Mama Kin, on the load screen of the iTunes Store).

I'm talking about iTunes U, the utterly fantastic, rich student resource furnished by Apple via iTunes. Want to learn how to program for iPhone? Check out Stanford University's offering.

For the 'U' stands for 'University', and Waikato is the third, after Otago and the Southern Institute of Technology, New Zealand institution to join the global list of top-class academic establishments to upload lectures, as audio or audio-visual tracks, via the free-to-use service. (Often you can choose between audio, or audio-with-video, versions of the same lectures.)

Whatever your interest, you'll most likely find a top lecturer from a top institution sharing their knowledge on iTunes U. It's a dedicated area within the iTunes Store offering free educational content including course lectures, language lessons and lab demonstrations, but also information for current and prospective students.

And it's all available for download in the same way you access music and movies on the iTunes Store. Except these academic podcasts are totally free, as are most of the tens of thousands of podcasts available on iTunes.

The University of Waikato is based in Hamilton in the centre of the North Island and has satellite campuses elsewhere in New Zealand, representing over 12,000 students.

Waikato University's content has only just became available on iTunes U (from the 3rd November). It includes academic files including guest lectures and special lecture series, plus campus tours, student profiles, the 2010 prospectus for international students, brochures and a lot more.

These are available 24/7 to both domestic and international visitors.
Paul Cowan, Technical Support Team Leader at the University of Waikato's School of Education, says staff were impressed with Otago's efforts on iTunes U. He also cited some excellent podcast examples from SIT.

I imagined the technicians at Waikato scrambling to record every session, but Paul says this hasn't been the case. Waikato, during its nine-month development process, put the emphasis on the lecturers self-recording, with assistance available if needed.

Once recorded, the content - gathered mostly from PCs but also from some Macs - is academically approved and edited into final shape using Podcast Producer (part of Apple OS X Server) on three Apple quad-core XServes.

The data arrives in a variety of formats - m4v, m4a, mp4 etc. Waikato currently has 10TBs storage with the ability to add more if needed, but Paul says iTunes U podcasts could easily be produced with less equipment if smaller institutions wanted to give iTunes U a go.

Uploading the podcasts to iTunes U is simple, with Paul saying Apple has been easy to deal with through the development process.

Customised workflows have been set up to facilitate uploading, with grid-based processing available to ease CPU load if necessary. QuickTime is "the glue", in Cowan's words, between the elements involved in the Podcast Producer workflow.

Not much additional equipment was purchased, either, beyond what Waikato was already using - some recording software for some of the Windows machines (not necessary for the Macs) and a few additional microphones and webcams.

The iTunes U offerings from the University of Waikato - there are already over 750 podcasts available - help present the institution to a worldwide audience. Cowan, who was instrumental in the venture, calls it a "fixed-purpose presence that is searchable", as iTunes U is essentially a dedicated RSS aggregator.

You might imagine that students might not attend lectures if they can just download the podcast later, but Paul says this isn't the case. Lecture attendance, according to research, tends to go up.

Something that has resulted, in some cases, is the lessening of in-lecture note-taking. Students can now listen attentively if they need to, taking occasional notes, then review the full content later at home with the podcast and take fuller notes - or just use the podcasts as notes, of course.

And they can review the podcasts anywhere: on iPods and iPhones and other smartphones, or on netbooks and laptops. As can you - the podcasts are available to everyone via iTunes, and not just to students and academics.

Academic staff use the recorded content in several ways - once a recording for an iTunes U podcast is made, it can also be posted on a website or used as part of a presentation, for example. Lecturers can also see what colleagues in the same and related academic realms are doing by checking out their iTunes U efforts - a nice low-carbon way of sharing information.

Professor Frank Scrimgeour, Dean of Waikato Management School and chair of the university's ITC Strategy and Policy Committee, says Waikato was keen to explore the latest technologies available to showcase material generated at the university to a global audience.

"As a progressive university, Waikato is keen to explore opportunities for international connectedness, and iTunes U is one channel with which we can share our academic excellence with an increasingly online audience."

- Mark Webster mac.nz