Warwick University has reached the digital milestone of one million downloads on its iTunesU channel. The university says in the 14 months since launching on the site it has established a position as one of the leading content providers on the service.
iTunesU, first launched by Apple in 2007, is intended as a place for higher education institutions the world over to upload video and audio content for public access. Content includes course lectures, language lessons, lab demonstrations, sports highlights and campus tours.
Warwick, one of a few UK universities to provide content through iTunesU, has over 600 programmes available for free download, including video footage and audio recordings from across the faculties as well as student-generated content.
One notable success is Warwick Manufacturing Group’s video of its environmentally sustainable Formula 3 racing car, which is powered by waste products from the chocolate industry. This film became a worldwide success, topping the engineering channel and receiving the most downloads of anything on iTunesU in June 2009.
In health and medicine, Peter Abraham’s anatomy films using plastinated specimens were in the top two Warwick downloads for most of 2009 and Ian Stewart’s Maths Challenges are also popular.
The Complexity Science Conference, ECCS ’09, held at Warwick became the most popular download for Warwick’s channel. The video caught the attention of the world for its look at how to solve the current climate crisis.
Warwick on iTunes is available at: http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/itunesu
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