Online Learning Gets Closer To Mainstream

As you may have heard, elearning recently extended its reach to your...seat on the; bus, subway, tube or car journey. In conjunction with iTunes, some of the world's top universities, along with museums, PBS stations and other cultural institutions have made available, a range of lectures and learning content, free to download onto your iPod. It is called iTunes U and features universities from the United States, Australia, New Zealand and the U.K, including Stanford, UCL, Carnegie Mellon, UC Berkeley, and Otago.

This is an exciting development as, firstly, it gives people access to high quality learning materials whether it be for study or just the sheer pleasure of learning (maybe you can impress that the stranger you're sitting next to on the bus with your knowledge of 19th century art). Secondly for those unsure what elearning is like, this is a great taster. Some universities are also making available actual recordings of class lectures so that students can revisit the content of lectures which they missed or lectures that they may have missed altogether. Although this will be limited for the time being.

Here is a sample of the hundreds of lectures available:

• The Economy According to Robert Reich (American Public Media)
• Green Rush: Eco-Business (American Public Media)
• Fuqua/Coach K Leadership Conference (Duke University, The Fuqua School of Business)
• China & Globalization (American Public Media)
• The Presidents Collection (PBS)
• The Role of the Humanities in Globalization (Yale University)
• Introducing the Roman World (Open University)
• Investigative Journalism and the Media (University of Otago)

To see and review the service and the learning content available, visit: iTunes U