Wright State on iTunes U hits 1 million

Podcasts, lectures, pre-recorded radio shows and commercials—the content that fills the Wright State University on iTunes U site runs the gamut, and the numbers have run up to a million.

You may not have noticed it when it happened, but it’s clear that tens of thousands of online users did notice when Wright State made it on a crucial listing for the portal last April. WSU on iTunes U is a service provided to the university by the Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL).

“As soon as we were listed in the iTunes Store under Universities and Colleges, downloads and all of our other stats tripled,” said Bryan Beverly, a Wright State senior digital technology analyst for CTL.

In fact, the new attention for university content has been so accelerated that in December Wright State hit 1 million. More specifically, the Wright State account logged its 1,000,000th visitor login, not including Wright State student, faculty and staff logins.

Though the feat does not equate to 1 million unique visitors, it does mean that now more than ever, people who have Apple IDs are finding and consuming Wright State–produced material.

“Content like this helps attract people to the university,” said Beverly, who’s been working tirelessly for years to collect audio, video, pictures and more from across campus to populate the public facing portion of the site.

Some of the most popular Wright State–contributed content on the listing right now include videos from the Faces of the Holocaust series, the latest podcasts from Radio Rounds, the Wright State medical-student-run show covering an array of topics in medicine, and featured videos from the Raj Soin College of Business.

“If you go poke around, we’ve got all kinds of marketing content out there as well,” said Beverly.

It’s been building since 2007 when Wright State began using several hundred gigabytes of hosted storage mainly for private course podcasts, lectures and other content for students registered in specific classes. While much of this specific course-related material is not accessible to the general public, professors use iTunes U to publish their recorded lectures and to provide supplemental material to their students.

Back then, it was a big leap forward and a prime example of how teaching has gone digital—appealing to the ever-increasing student population armed with iPhones, iPods and iPads, ever ready to download their next lecture with a gadget in the palm of their hand.

But coinciding with the private function, there was always a public component available too, but with scant material. Once enough content was collected and posted, the Wright State site met Apple’s criteria for being officially listed on the iTunes Store. Less then a year after the listing, Wright State hit the 1 million mark.

“It speaks to its usefulness as a marketing tool for the university,” said Beverly. “Over 220 million people have Apple IDs, and that number is growing.”

“iTunes U is significantly increasing the visibility of Wright State to a growing number of people wanting to complete an online degree,” said CTL Director Dan DeStephen.

“More potential students have become aware of Wright State through iTunes since April of last year than have ever visited our campus in our over 40 years of existence.”