Within a week of being hired at Harrisburg Area Community College, I was asked to sign a non-disclosure agreement to participate in a meeting between several faculty, my supervisor, and representatives of Apple. The topic? Apple was looking to expand on its existing iTunes U, which contained course collections of video and PDF content. They wanted to offer complete courses to include video, PDFs, note-taking capabilities, and more. In January of 2012, Apple unveiled the very first iTunes U courses. It was an exciting opportunity for my supervisor and I to support our faculty and be on the forefront of innovation. Faculty would receive dozens of emails every month from grateful individuals who had found their iTunes U courses useful.
In January 2012, our iTunes U team received the Presidential Standing Ovation award at our college. Externally, the Center for Digital Education awarded us an honorable mention for Best of the Web/Digital Education Achievement Award in August 2012. Although Apple officially retired iTunes U in 2021, it was a cutting edge idea that greatly contributed to the popularity of MOOCs and on-demand learning.