Academy and Studying in Germany

Since the beginning of 2009, German universities and institutes have been presenting themselves on iTunes. As of now, any user world-wide can download information free of charge on the universities, lectures and the most recent research results in the form of a podcast – at home, on trips, in the park or in the train.

The educational presentation at Apples’s internationally known download site iTunes is called “iTunes U”, “U” standing for “university”. Previously, prestigious American, British and Irish universities, including Stanford, Berkeley, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Oxford and Cambridge, have made their teaching material available there. Since the beginning of 2009, the multimedia platform has also presented the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (LMU) Munich, the Rheinisch-Westfälisch Technische Hochschule (RWTH) Aachen, the Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg and the privately financed Hasso Plattner Institut (HPI) in Potsdam.

On par with Stanford and Cambridge

The German universities make available to iTunes U users a great variety of podcasts, video and audio data, lecture notes and research results. Students and other interested persons can then transfer these to their computer, iPod or iPhone, and listen, for example, to a lecture on ethnology at the LMU Munich or on current questions in computer science at the RWTH Aachen. They can read about the new research results in medicine that have just caused a splash at the University of Freiburg. Or they can inform themselves about subjects in engineering and IT that are currently occupying the minds of students and professors at the Hasso Plattner Institute.

Apple decides, the universities select

Apple decides what may be presented at the platform. It invited the previously mentioned German universities to be part of the iTunes U European start not least because they had been chosen as “elite universities” by the Excellence Initiative. In Munich, moreover, there has been a longstanding contact between Apple and the coordinator of the virtual university at the LMU, says Luise Dirscherl, spokeswoman for the LMU’s president.

The universities have a free hand in deciding what they wish to offer for downloading. “Each university is itself responsible for the kind, amount, design and presentation of the content”, explains Dirscherl. “The LMU, for example, subdivided its page into rubrics about the LMU and about research and study.” Other institutions have chosen a similar form of organising the material.

New ways of conveying knowledge

The interest in this new way of conveying – and spreading – knowledge is considerable. Both teachers and users are plainly enthusiastic about it. “The idea is going down very well”, confirms Reiner Fuest, Director of the Department for Marketing and Knowledge Management at the University of Freiburg. “There is a great deal of new material that should be publicised. And our statistics prove that there is a great demand.” At iTunes U, according to Fuest, “the Freiburg material has a very good place among the top downloads”. Luise Dirscherl at the LMU Munich also confirms the success with numbers: “In the first two weeks after the start the LMU portal already registered almost 10,000 hits, and over seven terra bites were downloaded”. That corresponds to the capacity of 1,800 DVDs.

In addition to the international prestige, the presence of the German universities at iTunes U means their not missing the boat in modern developments. “In the fast moving high tech branch in particular, advanced training has become increasingly important”, says Hasso Plattner Institute Director Christoph Meinel, explaining the participation of his Institute. “The growing need for the professional, branch-specific transfer of knowledge can be satisfied excellently through such innovative platforms.” And the LMU Munich sees in iTunes U the opportunity of “reaching the target group ‘Generation iPod’” – and that, in principle, all over the world.