Oxford site on iTunes U hits one million
11 Aug 09
One million downloads have been made from Oxford’s site on iTunes U – a free website featuring more than 500 audio and video podcasts about the University.
Oxford also currently enjoys the number one spot in the global iTunes U top downloads chart, with philosophy lecturer Marianne Talbot’s ‘Romp through the history of philosophy’.
Previously, Nobel laureate and former Chief Economist of the World Bank, Professor Joseph Stiglitz, held the top spot for five weeks with his lecture about the recession.
The site contains public lectures, interviews with leading academics and important visitors, and advice on how to apply to the University.
There have been more than 30,000 downloads of admissions-related material alone. Potential applicants are able to download podcasts about how to choose a course and college, how to apply to the University, and how to prepare for interview. Recently new audio tours of Oxford, which potential applicants can listen to while visiting the city and the colleges, were added to the site.
The site was judged Website of the Year 2008 by the Association of Commonwealth Universities, and was short-listed for the Times Higher Education Leadership and Management Awards 2009. On 7 October it will be celebrating its first anniversary.
The site contains 264 hours of material in total, on 163 themed ‘feeds’. Visitors to the site can subscribe to feeds that interest them, in order to receive automatic updates when new podcasts are added. Three quarters of the podcasts are audio, and one quarter are video.