Karlshochschule International University

Introduction to iTunes U

The iTunes U service manages, distributes, and controls access to educational audio and video content for students within a college or university as well as the broader Internet. Member institutions are given their own iTunes U site that makes use of Apple’s iTunes Store infrastructure. The online service is without cost to those uploading or downloading material. Content includes course lectures, language lessons, lab demonstrations, sports highlights and campus tours provided by many top colleges and universities from the US, United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, Ireland and New Zealand.

An advantage iTunes U has over traditional podcasting tools is that access to content can be restricted because of the use of the iTunes infrastructure end-to-end. Authentication is handled by member college and university who prompts a visitor for information (like an account and password specific to that institution) and then passed a token onto the iTunes U site that contains the access level for that visitor. An example might be a class podcast that can only be accessed by student enrolled in the class.

iTunes U has material from a myriad of places including colleges and universities. There are over 75,000 files available to download. Individual universities can be visited through the Universities & Colleges section, and other institutions can be visited through the “Beyond Campus” section.

iTunes U functions much like Podcasts in that users can either download individual streams or subscribe to a stream so that iTunes will automatically download it.