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Case Study of Itunes U Deployment: Open University Terese Bird Terese Bird University of Leicester, Beyond Distance Research SCORE Project Alliance and OU SCORE Project E-Mail: [email protected] Web: http://www.le.ac.uk/spider Case Study of iTunes U Deployment: Open University Terese Bird 31 October 2011 Introduction The Open Educational Resources movement is often traced to 2001 when Massachusetts Institute of Technology announced it would begin publishing its entire course catalog free on the internet (Perkins, 2010). UNESCO announced its support for open educational resources in 2002 in its study into the impact of open courseware on higher education in the developing world(UNESCO, 2011). Finally the CapeTown Declararion in 2007 encouraged all governments to subsidise the creation and publication of open educational resources (Cape Town Meeting Participants, 2007). Also in 2007, iTunes U was launched by Apple Inc. as a channel for universities to publish free multimedia learning materials, quite separate from the OER movement. And yet it quickly was seen to be a possible channel of real OER. While many OER projects were launched through infusions of special project money such as from the Hewlett Foundation (which supported UNESCO and the Open University's OpenLearn), iTunes U sprang up as cooperation between Apple and several universities (Acosta, 2008). This report examines the iTunes U implementation of the Open University and will be of interest to educators, managers, and technologists considering launching an iTunes U site or who wishes to know more about open educational resource issues. This report is an output of a SCORE project with Shared Solutions of the UK Open University, entitled SPIDER: Sharing Practice with iTunes U Digital Educational Resources, from November 2010 through October 2011. Information presented is from a number of sources, including an online survey advertised worldwide through social media, capture and analysis of Twitter tweets containing the keyword itunesu, articles, reports, books, and interviews. Open University 2 Open University: Background and Open Educational Interests The Open University welcomed its first students in 1971 with an enrollment of 25,000 – launching a new concept of distance education as distinct from traditional higher education (Nasseh, 1997). The idea for the Open University (OU) was first floated by educationalist J C Stobart, who envisioned a ‘wireless university’ at which students who could not access traditional campus- based universities could earn degrees. Throughout its history, it has been a goal of the OU to make use of technology to facilitate learning more efficiently and innovatively, using radio, television, CDs, DVDs, and eventually the internet so that the education would be not an imitation of a traditional education but a new endeavour for a new clientele (Fragniere, 1976). In 2011 the OU has an enrollment of more than 250,000 students, employs more than 7,000 tutors, more than 1,200 full-time academic staff, and more than 3,500 support and administrative staff. Since its launch, the OU has served more than 1.6 million students worldwide. The OU is the largest university in the UK, the largest provider of distance learning, and the largest provider of higher education for people with disabilities. OU students are accepted not only from the UK but also throughout Europe and other countries such as Russia, Kuwait, and African nations (OpenUniversity, 2011). Figure 1. OU iTunes U home page From its first enrollments onward, the OU’s educational mission has included the promotion of social justice and opportunity through education that is available to all regardless of background or previous advantage or disadvantage. To this end, it established a partnership with the BBC and for many years provided lectures and learning material on radio and television, free of charge and free to copy. However, permission was not given to use even for educational purposes without a separate license or prior permission. This background and resulting library of archived recordings well positioned the OU for participation in the open educational movement as well as set the stage for its particular methods of participation. Open University 3 OpenLearn In 2006 the OU received a grant from the Hewlett Foundation to begin to build OpenLearn, their browser-based repository of open educational resources with workspace and comment areas (LearningSpace and LabSpace). This project was considered to be an experiment and was based on their huge inventory of learning material recordings. To quote the OpenLearn proposal, “The University has an extensive reservoir of high-quality materials available in a variety of formats. It proposes to explore how best to make some of these freely accessible in an international web-based open content environment and, in so doing, to advance open content delivery of informational research-based knowledge about modern pedagogies for higher education.”(McAndrew, 2006) Sustainability of OpenLearn was thought would be achieved when the university made use of open educational resources (OER) as a matter of course in all of its business (Wiley, 2006). OpenLearn launched in October 2006. With OpenLearn, the OU became the first UK university to join the OpenCourseWare Consortium.The OU’s YouTube channel of learning content was launch in January 2008. OpenLearn is Moodle-based and offers study units consisting of multimedia assets. Text is offered as xml and pdf, sounds are offered as mp3, images are offered as .jpg, and animations are included as Flash. Figure 2 shows a music theory learning unit with built-in quiz. Figure 3 shows a discussion forum around the music theory module. The discussion forums require the learner to click away from learning material to the discussion forum. Figure 2. OpenLearn study unit for introduction to music theory Figure 3. Discussion forum for introduction to music theory OpenLearn included the concept of a community of learning around the learning materials from the beginning, and thus included discussion forums as well as LabSpace, the segment in which learners can adjust and change the learning material, repurposing it for their own needs. From 2008 through 2011, the LearningSpace portion of OpenLearn (the portion in which users 'enroll' in a course and discuss) has atracted over 17 million visitors. iTunes U: Introduction and Preparation In January 2008, Apple Corporation approached the OU to invite them to launch one of the first iTunes U sites in Europe. iTunes U had already been launched for United States universities in 2007. It was decided that iTunes U would be treated as another public channel of free learning material, and would be launched as an addendum to OpenLearn with Hewlett funds. Apple requested that OU go live with their site in June 2008. By the time the initial discussions had taken place and the decision to go with the June launch date had been made, there was only 9 weeks until the launch date. Because of the short deadline, it was decided that only previously-released, actual teaching material would be released into iTunes U. This material was guaranteed properly-vetted and of good teaching quality because of the OU’s vetting processes already in place. Therefore the only work necessary was to choose material, reformat it, if necessary, to mp3 for sound, mp4 for video, and pdf for text, post it to the server, configure server to communicate with Apple servers, and create graphics and artwork for the iTunes U page and album covers. In most cases in the USA, iTunes U-participating universities post their learning material onto Apple servers, but in Europe the material is kept on the university’s own servers which simply have the correct RSS feeds. At that time, Apple required 175 unique items ready to go for a site launch (now it requires 150). Included in this 175, there cannot be, for example, the same event recorded as an mp3 and as an mp4. Having two different kinds of recordings of the same event is encouraged, especially for the sake of users with various disabilities, but the two different recordings of the same Open University 4 event would only count as one item for the list of 175 for the launch. The university must also be ready to release new material not too long after launch. Some universities prepare for this by holding new material in reserve even at launch, and then release it some weeks later. Staff and Procedure for the Launch A team was put into place to facilitate the iTunes U launch. None of these were newly-hired for that task; all were existing staff whose work priorities were adjusted for this work. A project manager whose job was to keep checking that everyone was doing what they were meant to do and that all tasks were kept on schedule. A software developer was put in charge of the servers onto which the files were being loaded. He checked through files and uploaded to servers and technologically enabled the launch to happen. He later began to experiment with the creation of multimedia-rich epub documents – learning material in ebook format. In 2010, the OU became one of three universities to release ebooks. This software developer works for the Knowledge Media Institute, whose remit is to innovate for education and continue to look to the future. A creative producer with a background in film and BBC experience was put onto the iTunes U launch. Her remit was to maintain the OU’s editorial values in all released pieces. Especially after the launch, her role became that of producing quality new content. Academics with a research story to tell will pitch their story to the creative producer, often after having attended a day-long media-training workshop at the OU in which they learn to tell their research story in a compelling way. The producer makes a judgement call as to whether the research story will make a good video piece; if so, the video is planned and shot, edited and produced for iTunes U.
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