University Podcasts: The New Video Wave on iTunes

When uni­ver­si­ties first start­ed devel­op­ing their pod­cast col­lec­tions, a good num­ber took their audio archives — the many lec­tures and talks they had record­ed over the years — and uploaded them onto iTunes. Now, months lat­er, some insti­tu­tions are turn­ing to their video archives. Most notably, MIT has giv­en users access to video pod­casts tak­en from its ambi­tious Open­Course­Ware ini­tia­tive. (Har­vard has done some­thing sim­i­lar with its series, Harvard@Home, although the col­lec­tion is con­sid­er­ably small­er.) Mov­ing these videos onto iTunes makes per­fect sense. While it’s unlike­ly that many will watch these videos on their actu­al iPods, it seems safe to assume that new audi­ences will get exposed to these col­lec­tions and be con­tent­ed with watch­ing these clips on their com­put­ers at least, or per­haps on Apple TV down the road. iTunes has become a dynam­ic marketing/distribution plat­form, with mass­es of users flock­ing to it and dis­cov­er­ing new con­tent along the way. For insti­tu­tions like MIT, shift­ing con­tent onto iTunes stream­lines their efforts to get their con­tent noticed, which makes the project a no-brain­er with no down­side. For more on the MIT Open­Course­Ware ini­tia­tive, click here. For info on the recent inte­gra­tion of iTunes U with iTunes, click here.See our com­plete Uni­ver­si­ty Pod­cast Col­lec­tion.