Universities ramp up podcast offerings
More than 100 universities worldwide are making class lectures available for free in the form of audio and video podcasts. The so-called OpenCourseWare movement started in 2002 at MIT, and is spreading rapidly now that podcasting is going mainstream. Podcasting is taking the movement in new directions.
The University of California Berkeley has 59 complete courses available on iTunes, which is the most popular place to subscribe to podcasts. Those courses include Existentialism in Literature and Film, and Introduction to Chemistry. Berkeley offers videos on Google Video as well.
Dan Colman, director of Stanford University's continuing studies program and creator of the Open Culture weblog, says college and university podcasts generally fall into two categories: guest lectures and complete course lectures. He says higher education podcasts are just now beginning to take off.
