The use of iTunes U is changing the way Bruins interact with their schoolwork and campus community.
A growing number of UCLA departments have begun posting videos, lectures and podcasts on iTunes to provide easy access to both academic and supplemental content.
Students now expect to be able to rewatch a lecture in the form of iTunes or BruinCast lectures, and are driving the demand for more recorded material, said Rose Rocchio, director of academic applications.
“They’re study guides; they’re security,” Rocchio said. “(Students) can pay attention in class rather than try and write down every word a faculty member says.”
Jay Phelan teaches in the life science department and posts his lectures on iTunes U. He has found that the availability of podcasts do not reduce class attendance.
“My first fear was obviously that if people could get that information in some other way that they would just not come,” Phelan said.
Students can easily get distracted watching lectures on the computer, so he said he believes that is why students still opt to attend class.
“When I’m watching something on a small screen, my brain is ready to be distracted all the time,” Phelan said. “When I’m in lecture, it’s a more immersive experience. It forces me to sit and engage in it. Somehow, in person, there’s more sensory input for me and it helps me to process things better.”
When iTunes U launched at UCLA in March 2008, 20 campus departments had more than 600 podcasts.
Now, that number has risen above 1,000 podcasts, incorporating about 26 campus departments.
As of mid-October, UCLA’s podcasts have seen 2.1 million subscribed and 350,000 unsubscribed downloads.
The downside, Rocchio said, is that iTunes U podcasts cannot include any copyright materials because all content is public and viewable to everyone. An art history class, for example, would have to buy the rights to works of art in order to post the lectures on iTunes.
The iTunes committee at UCLA is close to making an agreement with Apple to allow for password protection of certain materials on the Web site. Only students enrolled in the course would be allowed access to such lectures. UC Berkeley, another user of iTunes U, does not have private content, but Duke University has both public and password-protected material on iTunes.
Some professors have been slow to get on board with podcasting due to a lack of equipment or knowledge about podcasts. Rocchio said. There is, however, a trend toward research getting published via iTunes.
“It’s sort of a slow trickle of professors that want to put up their materials,” Rocchio said. “It’s a capacity thing. There’s a number of classrooms on campus that have the ability to record, but when it comes to research, a lot of them may have the ability to do so because of a research grant.”
Rocchio said the key is to train teaching assistants to record podcasts for use on iTunes.
Daniel Bustos, the coordinator of BruinCast, sees iTunes U becoming a bigger part of how students learn from their courses in the near future when it becomes easier to incorporate BruinCast lectures on iTunes.
“Our course content goes on its own pages and its own servers, so some of (BruinCast’s) content can go up rather quickly,” Bustos said. “We’ve been working on a mechanism that would allow us to easily export the content from our servers to iTunes.”
The difference between iTunes and BruinCast lies in the work involved with uploading a podcast to iTunes. Faculty must sign up, wait for Web site approval and then upload their own content.
“We’re right there at the adoption explosion, I’d say. BruinCast started with five courses in 2005, we’re now at some 72 courses this quarter,” Bustos said.
UCLA Recreation has been podcasting almost since the technology began, but iTunes has helped in distributing their material, said Bill Aberbuch, the UCLA Recreation marketing services manager.
“We’re thrilled to have iTunes U because it makes it easy to upload podcasts,” he said.
Recreation uses podcasts to reach out to educate the UCLA community about physical fitness as part of their FitWell Program and iWorkout video series. Student workers produce all video content, including tutorials on how to operate gym equipment in the Wooden Center.
“(The podcasts) give (students) a chance to see how to use the equipment,” Aberbuch said. “Instead of having to take a class, they can just go online. They can do it whenever they want to ““ that’s the benefit of a podcast.”
Rocchio hopes to see iTunes U expand to other sectors of campus, such as sports, arts, performances and in a larger scope, to the UCLA community.
“It’s putting UCLA content and knowledge out there,” she said. “It should be a very content-rich environment for the UCLA community to feel connected with UCLA. I think it has broad-reaching potential.”