Terese Bird presented "iTunes U and Me: SPIDER SCORE Project Report" as a project report to other SCORE fellows on 24 November, 2011, at the Open University, Milton Keynes, UK .

SPIDER (Sharing Practice with ITunes U Digital Educational Resources) is investigating the development and release of multimedia-rich educational resources via iTunes U, Apple Incorporated's educational content distribution system. SPIDER is a SCORE project, supported by the Open University's SCORE (Support Centre for Open Resources Education) Open Educational Resources impact study, and funded by HEFCE.

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SPIDER is examining the unique issues surrounding the use of iTunes U as a distribution channel of free learning material. SPIDER will model the organisational, pedagogical, and practical implications of an institution adopting iTunes U, by comparing and contrasting approaches of several UK Higher Education institutions -- in particular, project partner institutions Open University, University of Nottingham, and University of Oxford. The model will be disseminated and best practice identified and shared, by means of this reports and events including OER11 in Manchester and ALT-C Conference 2011. Finally, SPIDER examines the impact of iTunes U as a channel of free learning material to discover: how open is it, how does it compare to YouTube.edu, what is its impact.

Image courtesy of jmrobledo on Flickr