The explosion of recordings, which are offered free of charge, enable general online users access to a wealth of educational content that was previously reserved for paying classroom students.
Ready for an iMBA
Top business schools including the University of Cambridge Judge Business School and Yale School of Management now offer course material for download through iTunes University (iTunes U), a section of the iTunes online store.
The offerings have proven extremely popular. The University of Oxford has attracted one million downloads of its content through iTunes U, while Stanford University said more than one-million users downloaded its course on creating iPhone applications within seven weeks of being published.
HEC Paris, the French business school, has worked with Apple since 2006 to provide MBA students with new iPod Touch devices, which allow them to download filmed MBA lectures. Soon the HEC content will also be available publically through iTunes U, Venessa Klein, HEC's project manager for iTunes, told CNN.
"It's a good marketing tool, not as publicity but to really show people what we are providing," she said. "You can watch a lecture, learn a lot and think 'I wish I could be there.' The idea is to show what you could learn if you were at this place."
In March, YouTube launched YouTube EDU, which hosts the video channels of hundreds of schools. Earlier this month, it added videos from 45 universities in Europe and Israel.
Another popular and more well-known site, Academic Earth - which hosts videos from US Ivy-League universities such as Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Stanford - was recently named by Time Magazine as one of the top websites of 2009.
Additionally, MIT offers an open courseware site that provides free access to almost all MIT content, including lecture notes, assignments, and exams.
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