In addition to courses, the number of available non-course OER such as articles, Open Access Journals and books are also growing at a fast rate. For example Textbook Revolution, a student-run site, contains links to a number of freely available (mostly undergraduate) textbooks. Users are able to search for textbooks by licensing (and can therefore access OER textbooks).
iTunes U is another important content-sharing initiative which has gained immense popularity. Launched in 2007, Apple's iTunes University allows Higher Education institutions to make audio and visual content freely available for download (as well as making provision for subscriptions for those wishing to sell content). There is no single licence governing use of all content on iTunes U, and content is freely accessible for students to access and use. However, each institution that sets up an iTunes U account can specify certain parameters and conditions for further use (with many opting to use a Creative Commons licence).
A year after its introduction, iTunes U logged over 4 million downloads and two years since its introduction, iTunes U reached a new milestone with more than 100 million downloads. According to Apple, one of the most popular areas of iTunes U has been that of the United Kingdom-based Open University (iTunes link), whose learning categories include Arts and Humanities, Business and Management, Childhood and Youth, Health and Social Care, Law, Psychology, and Science. The academic institution says it caters to at least 150,000 undergraduate and 30,000 postgraduate students, more than 25,000 of whom live outside the U.K.
More than 175 higher-education organizations currently provide content to iTunes U, including Princeton University, University of California at Los Angeles, Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Oxford University, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, and Yale University.
Figure 4: iTunesU
A non-free image has been removed from this page.
A screenshot of iTunes U
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