Presenters

Chris Malmberg, UAF eLearning and Distance Education
Skip Via, UAF School of Education

UAF Courses

Course/Instructor Web QR (iTunes)
Teaching for the Evolution of English Composition
Chris Malmberg

Uses an ebook published in the iBookStore for course content		 http://goo.gl/VUTYpC
iPad 101
 Skip Via

Uses instructional videos for course content		 http://goo.gl/MyQUkg

iTunes U Courses

Course/Instructor Web QR (iTunes)
Creating iTunes U Courses
Cedars Schools of Excellence

Nice guide to creating iTunes U courses.		 http://bit.ly/1bn1Cwb



Resources

Description Web QR
UA iTunes U site http://goo.gl/tBNtT2
UAF Mobile App
(includes direct link to UA iTunes U)		 http://bit.ly/1at45kl
iTunes U Site Manager

The tool for posting collections of resources in iTunes U (as opposed to creating courses).		 http://goo.gl/cDI1OS
iTunes U Course Manager

The tool used to create iTunes U courses--works with all browsers, but not on mobile devices.		  http://goo.gl/EolokP (Mobile devices
not supported)

Caveats

  • Collections and courses may not include copyrighted material that you don't own or have permission to use.
    (Exception: unpublished courses may contain copyrighted material if access is granted by URL only)

Course/Collection Comparison

(click to embiggen)

Getting Started

(Click to embiggen)

Glossary


  • Course: A designed experience consisting not only of materials curated and created by the teacher, but also of activities, assessments and feedback. Perhaps worth credit, or perhaps not, but definitely more than just an amalgamation of content, which is what is knowned as a "Collection." On the UA iTunesU site, Courses are designated by whether they're open or not above where the campus location ID is placed (as above, with "Open").
  • Collection: A collection of content, usually in the Materials section of an iTunesU shell, for use to supplement a course which is being delivered over some other medium (face-to-face, Blackboard, etc.), or perhaps simply to organize and make available that content, as with some educational podcasts and lectures. Essentially, iTunesU used to make available a big pile of links and uploaded media. On the UA iTunesU 
  • iBooks: eBooks as created through Apple's iBook Author App, available for Mac OSX. Think an upper-middle-end design program in the vein of Adobe Illustrator, but focused on developing ebook publications for dissemination strictly to iPads and iPhones. The constraint, sometimes frustrating, nonetheless makes it easy to develop beautiful, smoothly operating, interactive and multi-modal ebooks which can be synced with iTunesU courses for your students. The syncing operates through an iTunesU course's Notes section, to which students can add their thoughts while they study; any highlighted section in an iBook that is synced with an iTunesU course automatically loads into the Notes section of that course, allowing students to swiftly navigate and return to the quotes/figures which caught their eye while they were reading the material.
  • iTunesU Course Manager: The Course Manager is the editing tool for creating an iTunesU Course or Collection.
  • iTunesU Site Administrator: A Site Administrator is any iTunesU admin account at a school, say UAF, who has permission to publish Courses and Collections to that school's iTunesU page. At UA, OIT has iTunesU Site Admin permissions.
  • Materials: Materials is the catch-all section of an iTunesU Course or Collection where content is linked-to or uploaded. Materials can contain PDFs, images, videos, slideshows, sound files, etc., or link out to pretty much anywhere on the web. While Materials is the single repository for all means of accessing media, specific posts can have certain selections within the Materials repository listed directly below them; i.e., required reading for this week, or required viewing for the quiz. 
  • Outline: The Outline is the sparest representation of the course, working as a kind of Table of Contents by listing every Post as nested within their respective chapters or modules.
  • Posts: Posts are the individual steps by which students may progress through an iTunesU course. A post may be an assignment or set of related assignments, for instance.
  • Published (Open): A Course or Collection which has been approved by the Site Admin at a particular school will appear on that school's iTunesU catalog. 
  • URL Only (Closed): A Course or Collection which has not been approved by the Site Admin at a particular school can still be enrolled-in/accessed via a URL that the Course Manager is free to disseminate. Students access the course via the URL, and can take the course normally, but the course will not be listed (in iTunesU) on the school's course catalog.