One million tracks of educational content from the Open University has now been downloaded in the four months since it joined Apple’s iTunes U channel. This has meant providing over 17 Terabytes of data, being around 62,000 hours of audio and video from the Open University to a new, worldwide audience.
On 3 June, the Open University joined world-renowned universities, including Stanford, MIT and Yale on iTunes U. We now have over 50 podcast "courses" in iTunes U albums for download to your computer, iPod and iPhone. With educational content including videos and sound recordings on topics ranging from Darwinian Theory to foundation Spanish.
KMi and the Open University’s Learning and Teaching Solutions worked hard on the launch back in June and continue to collaborate on the development and expansion of the Open University on iTunes U. "We are now getting over one new person downloading from the Open University on iTunes U every minute of every day", said KMi Director, Peter Scott. "With 87% of those downloads being outside of the UK, this means that we are now reaching out to a whole new world of potential students".
Professor Brenda Gourley, Vice-Chancellor of the Open University, said the relationship with Apple was a great example of the University looking for new and innovative ways to provide students with its award winning curriculum.
"The Open University, recently ranked second in student satisfaction for all UK universities, is providing high quality educational outcomes for more than 200,000 students. iTunes U makes high quality educational content available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week to anyone with access to an internet connection, free of charge," she said. "The Open University is widely known to be a world leader in the distance education learning, and this partnership with Apple is another example of how we are maintaining our position by utilising current and emerging technologies for our students’ benefits," she said.
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