Web Strategy and Development Blog

iTunes U courses now available

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The new iTunes U Course Manager is now available  to any instructor who would like to create private courses for their own students. Instructors can sign up for iTunes U Course Manager, create courses, and invite students to enroll. New instructors can create up to 12 courses with up to 50 students per course, and they receive 20GB of space for their course content.

Affiliation with Missouri State on iTunes U

Instructors can also affiliate their courses with Missouri State on iTunes U and submit them for publication. Affiliation makes a course available to the general public, and provides instructors with unlimited courses, enrollment, and storage.

Introduction to Poetry course

Please see the following courses for examples of courses affiliated with Missouri State on iTunes U:

Additional resources

iTunes U Changes

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At Apple’s education event held last week on Jan. 19, the company announced three new education initiatives: iBooks 2.0, iBooks Author, and a major update to iTunes U. While the changes to iBooks and the new iBooks Author program are of interest to us, I’d like to focus here on the changes made to iTunes U.

Courses

iTunes U Course screenshotThe first change is that iTunes U now allows for full courses. A course is defined by Apple as a collection of audio, video, iBooks textbooks, ePub books, syllabi and class assignments, posts from the instructor, PDFs, presentations, and more.

While this is not a truly interactive course management tool like Blackboard, it does allow instructors to include their own iBooks textbooks, syllabi, and assignments, and gives an overall structure and timeline to their courses.

The new courses are meant to be taken at an individual learner’s own pace, just like past collections in iTunes U, however it definitely expands on what has been possible with iTunes U courses in the past.

At this time we do not have any of these new courses available for Missouri State on iTunes U, but we are hoping to test this new functionality with some volunteer instructors in the near future.

iTunes U App

iTunes U App screenshotThe other major new component of iTunes U is the new iTunes U app for iOS devices (iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch). The new app looks very similar to iBooks’s bookshelf; both courses and collections in iTunes U appear within the app.

Any time a user wants to search for new iTunes U content, they will open the app and select the Catalog button on the top menu bar. The catalog interface behaves just like iTunes; when a user is finished searching the catalog, they can press the Library button to return to this bookshelf view.

It is worth noting that to use iTunes U on any mobile device, a user is now required to have both the new iTunes U app as well as have their iOS operating system upgraded to the latest version (5.01). If a user attempts to search for iTunes U content on a device with an older version of the OS, they are directed to upgrade as well as download the new app.

The iTunes U experience in the iTunes software on the desktop is, as of this writing, unchanged from how it has previously functioned; these changes only affect iTunes U on mobile devices.

Additional Resources

Below is a collection of articles I have collected since the rollout of these new education initiatives. Please visit them to learn more about the new iTunes U as well as the other new Apple education products:

New iTunes U Site

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We recently updated the Missouri State on iTunes U site to utilize Apple’s Public Site Manager, which is a new method for uploading and managing all of our multimedia content on iTunes U. This change also means that the design and layout of Missouri State on iTunes U is also now updated to better reflect recent changes in the iTunes U Store, with more options for us to feature specific content and better organization through the use of iTunes categories and tags.

I’d like to now focus on a few of the new features available in Missouri State on iTunes U:

  • Web previews of content collections – you can now preview a collection in your web browser without even having to open the iTunes software. View Great Ideas in Psychology to see an example of this new web preview.
  • Ratings and reviews of content – content in iTunes U can now be rated and reviewed by users. This is also reflected in the new Top Downloads section on the Missouri State on iTunes U homepage.
  • Categories and tags – content can now be categorized in two ways: under the default iTunes categories, as well as under custom categories. An example iTunes category is Humanities while an example custom category is About Missouri State.
  • Custom features on the homepage – it is now possible to highlight selected items or content collections on the homepage. These new custom features are completely customizable and are a great way for us to highlight specific content.

On a separate note, Missouri State instructor Todd Daniel started a new psychology podcast series last week titled The Story of Psychology. Todd’s previous podcast, Great Ideas in Psychology, has been extremely popular with iTunes U users, and we’re sure his new podcast will also be very successful. This week, Apple took note of the new podcast and designated it as the main featured collection on the iTunes U homepage. Congrats to Todd on another great podcast!

Re-purposing videos from Inside Missouri State

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This post will give you step-by-step instructions on how to embed the videos from Inside Missouri State on your University web site. There are five marketing message videos, one for each of the first five sections of the site, as well as testimonial/spotlight videos that correspond to each marketing message on the left of these sections. You are free to include any of these videos on your University website. Here’s how:

  1. The videos are hosted on Missouri State’s iTunes U site. You will need the URLs for these videos to embed them on your site. First ensure that the iTunes software is installed on your computer, and then visit http://itunesu.missouristate.edu and click on the button labeled ‘Open iTunes U: Public Access.’ This will open iTunes on your computer, and automatically navigate to Missouri State on iTunes U.
  2. Now that iTunes is open to Missouri State’s page, click on the section labeled ‘About Missouri State,’ which is in the first content area called ‘Welcome.’ You will see multiple tabs in the About Missouri State section. The tab labeled ‘Inside Missouri State’ houses the five marketing message videos from Inside Missouri State, and the tab labeled ‘Spotlights’ houses the testimonial videos from Inside Missouri State (they are the first six videos under this tab).
  3. Find the video you wish to use on your site, ensuring that the correct tab where it is located is selected and open in iTunes. At the top of the page is a ‘Subscribe’ button. Right-click on this button, and select ‘Copy Link.’
  4. Open your web browser, and paste the link you just copied from iTunes into the address bar and press Enter. You will now see the RSS Feed of the tab you had open in iTunes U. Find the video you wish to embed on your site, and copy the URL of that video. The video URLs should all end with ‘encolusure.mp4.’

Now that you have the URL to the video copied, you need to paste that URL into the video player. In Web Press, you will use a content class called ‘Video Player – MP4 or FLV.’ The instructions below will show you how to embed the video using this player in Web Press.

If you have a University site that does not use Web Press, the embed code can be provided to you. Please send an email request to bradmitchell@missouristate.edu if you would like to use the video player embed code on your site outside of Web Press.

To embed the video in your Web Press page:

  1. Open the Foundation Page of the web site that you want to edit.
  2. Scroll to the bottom of the page, and click Edit List of Content Pages. The Edit Link Element page opens.
  3. On the Edit Link Element page, click Create and Connect Page. The Content Class Groups page opens.
  4. In the top portion of the screen, click the General Pages group.
  5. In the bottom portion of the screen, click Video Player – MP4 or FLV.
  6. Type in a headline. This headline can not seen by users and is used for searching only.
  7. Open Edit Video Settings Via Form and paste the video URL you copied from iTunes.

(More information on using the MP4/FLV Video Player in Web Press can be found at http://webpress.missouristate.edu/VideoPlayerMp4Flv.htm)

Also note that you can use the above instructions to embed any video that is hosted on Missouri State’s iTunes U site. Simply find the video you wish to embed on your site, and then follow the above instructions.

iTunes U Artwork Updated

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Last week we updated all of the artwork for our Complete Public Courses in iTunes U. Here are a few examples of the new artwork:

telecourse-tale3superpowerstelecourse-surveyofAstronomytelecourse-missouriGovtelecourse-introductiontoReligion

We have already seen a jump in views and downloads for some of our courses: the Classical Mythology course by Dr. Joseph Hughes is in the Top 20 Downloads for all of iTunes U, and is currently the #1 Download in the Literature category in iTunes U.

iTunes U Top Downloads