Web Strategy and Development News

New Personal Finance course in iTunes U

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A new dual-credit course on Personal Finance was produced this fall semester for Missouri State on iTunes U.

iTunes U Top CoursesCourse information

This course is presented by Roger Wallenburg, and was produced by the Digital Media Production Center.

This course is a study of personal finance topics from the consumer and societal perspectives, and will provide students with the concepts and critical thinking skills to understand the effects of financial decisions on individuals, families, and society.

The course contains a total of 8 lecture videos.

Popularity

This course was published to iTunes U at the beginning of the fall semester in August, and it has already become one of the top courses.

As of this writing, the course is currently the most popular course of all courses available on iTunes U.

Writing for the web

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Writing for the webI wanted to quickly share this great collection on iTunes U from the University of Glasgow, Writing for the web.

This series of video podcasts are from a web writing workshop developed for internal training purposes at the University of Glasgow. However this is great content for anyone who writes for the web, and the podcasts cover:

  • why web is different from print
  • defining your page
  • structuring your copy
  • the tone of your writing
  • thinking about links
  • refining your page

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

Marketing for Public Affairs Conference

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The Public Affairs Conference is a major event each year on campus, and our office has always put considerable effort into creating the conference website and promotion before and after the conference takes place.

This year we went one step further and also added a new mobile app to the mix. I would like to share all aspects of how we market the conference, with the hope that others can use this information as best practices when it comes to marketing their own events on campus.

Website2012 Public Affairs Conference webstie

The Public Affairs homepage design is  updated at the beginning of each fall semester to incorporate the logo and theme for the year. The Public Affairs Conference website is also updated at this time, though only as a basic shell. Once the speakers for the conference are confirmed, the conference site takes shape with the full schedule and speaker bios posted at the beginning of each spring semester.

The key features of the conference website include:

  • A photo slideshow at the top of the page featuring the plenary speakers
  • Three text content areas highlighting the year’s theme, schedule and logistical information such as parking and directions
  • A RSS feed of Public Affairs blog posts concerning the conference
  • Social media buttons linking to Public Affairs social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube
  • Various links to past conferences, plenary speakers and past testimonials

Mobile appPublic Affairs Conference mobile app

A new mobile app was created for the conference this year, and was made available on both Android and iOS devices. This app is specific to this conference, and we will be using it as a springboard for future mobile app development, as well as creating new versions of the app for future Public Affairs Conferences.

The app allowed the conference attendees to:

  • View the event schedule
  • Learn more about the presenters
  • Manage session schedules
  • View the map of the venue where the sessions were being held
  • Interact with others via Twitter and Facebook
To learn more about the mobile app from a technical standpoint, please read Chad Killingsworth’s recent blog post on HTML5 Mobile Applications.

Promotion

Each year, our office draws up a promotion schedule that details what aspects of the conference will be promoted when and where. Promotion for the conference begins in early March, which is a little more than a month before the conference typically takes place.

The main areas of promotion are social media tools such as Facebook and Twitter, but we also utilize media from past conferences available on YouTube and iTunes U, which we will discuss in further detail next. The Missouri State homepage is also a key promotional area, with photos, videos and Go Maroon! features highlighting the conference in the weeks building up to the conference, as well as during the conference itself.

Some examples of how we schedule the promotion for the conference include:

  • On each Monday, a feature on a plenary speaker is posted to Facebook, with a link to their bio and plenary session.
  • Promotion of the #msuconnect hashtag used during the conference on Twitter.
  • Highlight media from last year’s conference to help get people excited about the upcoming sessions.
  • Post logistical information about parking, shuttles and location on Facebook and Twitter the day before the conference begins.
  • Share the mobile app on Facebook and Twitter before and during the conference.
  • During the week of the conference, the media hub on the homepage focuses on the conference on the Photos, Videos, Tune in and learn, and Go Maroon! tabs.
  • During the conference, we post updates every few hours updating everyone on that morning or afternoon’s sessions and plenary speakers.
  • We also post photos of the conference sessions as they are happening periodically to Facebook and Twitter.
Missouri State homepage feature for the Public Affairs Conference

Media

Our office also records audio of all of the panel sessions at the conference each year, as well as video of select plenary speakers. Once the conference has concluded, we start posting all of the available media online: both audio and video to iTunes U, and video to our YouTube channel as well.

Collecting and posting this media after the conference serves many functions:

  • Featuring the media on the Missouri State homepage and through social media outlets allows us to continue to promote the conference even after it is over.
  • As stated previously, we often use media from the previous year’s conference to build excitement about that year’s upcoming conference.
  • The media also acts as an archive of each year’s conference, and this is shared by the committee each year to recruit speakers for future conferences.

Public Affairs Conference media in iTunes U

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: