The Argument for Free Classes via iTunes

The Argument for Free Classes via iTunes
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/17/the-argument-for-free-classes-via-itunes/
The New York Times Business Innovation Technology Society (Bits) Blog recently featured a piece by Brad Stone about the increasingly popular iTunes U, Apple’s catalog of lectures from colleges and universities around the world. Launched two years ago, there are now 600 schools participating. iTunes U makes more than 250,000 individual classes available to the public. Martin Bean, vice-chancellor of Open University, a distance-learning institution based in Britain, states, “‘There are still a lot of universities in the world that define the value of their experience as somehow locking up their content and only giving people access to the content when they enroll in the program….The courage comes from taking the next leap of faith. Universities no longer define themselves by their content but the overall experience: the concept, the student support, the tutoring and mentoring, the teaching and learning they get and the quality of the assessment.'” Open University has “more than 375,000 downloads a week,” and recently had its 10-millionth download.