Open University & iTunes

In June 2008 the Open University went live with their iTunes store. The idea was to follow the likes of Yale and MIT in providing course content (audio and video) for free via a download in the popular iTunes application:

http://www3.open.ac.uk/media/fullstory.aspx?id=13805

The service has been live for 16 months and in that time has had over 10 million downloads by over a million visitors. The project has been a huge success and there seems to be little sign of interest waning :

http://projects.kmi.open.ac.uk/itunesu/impact/

However, there has always been an issue...you need to download and install the iTunes application in order to access the content. This isn't always feasible or practical and is a potential barrier to pointing students towards these resources...that is up until now. Recently a new beta service has been launched by the KIMI project that allows these OU podcasts to be accessed via a browser without the need to download or install iTunes:

http://podcast.open.ac.uk/

There are some really interesting podcasts there and because the OU structures its content in an 'academic' fashion it is really easy for students to link through to relevant info.