Project Overview

CUNY Academic Affairs is sponsoring the effort to bring together the vast and able resources of the university’s faculties, academic technologists, Centers for Excellence in Teaching & Learning, and students to develop a body of best practices, to identify technologies and processes and to integrate the university’s Learning Management system with the iTunes U platform in ways that enhance teaching and learning.

Download the briefing document here: CIS Briefing document – iTunes U academic prot3.pdf

Project Objectives

The four broad outcomes that the pilot project has been designed to foster are:

1. Technology: Promote the use of technologies and practical processes for producing or adapting quality and appealing audio and video content to a teaching and learning objective.
2. Collaboration: Foster an environment of supportive and results-producing collaboration where information technologists and instructional experts support faculty and student providers and consumers of rich media content.
3. Creative, Usable Enhancements: Demonstrate the ability to incorporate faculty- and student-driven enhancements into a learning process influenced by the creative use of audio and video content.
4. Pedagogical Best Practices: Encourage the development of best practices and demonstrate how these can be shared and incorporated into well designed, outcome-focused rich media content and associated learning activities.

FAQ – Rules of the Road

1. Controlled Access to Content: By definition and for the purposes of the pilot project, access to CUNY iTunes U academic, teaching & learning content is limited to faculty, students and staff of The City University of New York, its constituent colleges, schools and programs. In almost all instances, controlled access to such content is via Blackboard and a building block that allows students and faculty to access iTunes U audio, video and PDF content from within a Blackboard course (Blackboard and iTunes U Integration). If, as is the case with the Macaulay Honors College, there is no instance of Blackboard, another method, such as leveraging the college’s LDAP or Active Directory Identity Management/Access Management facilities.
2. General Public Access to Content: Access by the general public to CUNY content, whether that content is promotional, academic, informational in nature, is provided for in the Public, Community Affairs track under the sponsorship of CUNY University Relations.
3. Control over iTunes U Site and Blackboard Integration: The academic administration (including Academic/Instructional Computing) and faculty at each college, school or program will have control over the the design of iTunes U courses and the content placed into such courses.
4. Blackboard and Peer Review of Posted Content: Since for most access to content will be via Blackboard courses, and since a primary objective of the pilot is to share and collaborate we urge that you use your test instance of Blackboard to create test courses with which iTunes U content can be associated. To ensure that participants from other campuses can access your courses and associated audio, video files we ask that you create test courses to which “Guests” have access. Notification of the availability of content and a call for peer review can be sent to all participants viathe project discussion group. Contact the project manager if you encounter any difficulty accessing the discussion group.

Subject Matter Areas

• Access Control Considerations
• Assessment: Gauging Outcomes
• Blackboard and iTunes U Integration
• Content Creation for Faculty
• Intellectual Property Considerations
• Pedagogy: Best Practices
• Pedagogy: Resources
• Rich Media: Resources on the WWW

Campus Coordinators