Per an agreement between iTunes U and the University of Arizona, the general public will now be able to look to the iTunes service for a centralized collection of podcasts by UA faculty, instructors, department members and program liaisons.
As I reported earlier this month, more and more colleges and universities are using podcasts and other Web 2.0 technologies to increase their visibility and student “market share.” I love it. Taking a page from MIT’s OpenCourseWare initiative, UA is making its courses, faculty lectures, and other programming open to the public. Most notably, users now have free and open access to lectures from the UA College of Science’s prestigious Evolution: Our World Ourselves and Global Climate Change lecture series.
I think we are going to see a rush of these services hit the web as more and more colleges and universities begin to use the iTunes U channel as a means to bolster student enrollment. What better way to showcase your academic talent than by broadcasting information from your top level departments to iTunes users! AU is by no means alone. I’ve mentioned MIT’s initiative. Here is a list of other colleges and universities offering content via the iTunes U service:
Arizona State University
Bowdoin College
Broome Community College
Concordia Seminary
DePaul University
Duke
Michigan Tech University
MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
NJIT (New Jersey Institute of Technology)
Otis College of Art and Design
Pennsylvania State University
Queen’s University
Reformed Theological Seminary
Seattle Pacific University
Stanford
Texas A&M University
UC Berkeley
UMBC (University of Maryland, Baltimore County)
University of South Florida
Vanderbilt University
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