Download the spreadsheet for the UA's iTunes U public site and the iTunes U private site.
Here is something for those of you interested in the podcasting set up this semester for Centennial Hall's large classes. Elaine Marchello's TRAD 104 Human and Animal Interrelationships from Domestication to the Present realized 99 students downloading the last lecture from last week, "traders continued." The lecture before that one, " Ancient animals part one" was downloaded 96 times. This shows that students are definitely interested in having lectures available as podcasts. This course's podcasts are available in the UA's Private iTunes U, so these numbers only reflect students enrolled in that class - no one outside of the class.
To think our lectures would be made available through this technology, iTunes has come such a long way! My first MP3 player was an RCA Lyra that had a CF slot. It was horrible! Then I got my hands on a creative CD player that read MP3 and thought that was just about the best thing ever! But then there was iPod. Mac only, seemed very cool, but was so expensive! I finally jumped in with a 20gb 4th gen iPod and haven't looked back. It's so funny when I see people rail against iTunes, but I remember the clunky software for that Lyra and I compare that to the iTunes of today and my head spins.
Here are two studies of webcasting from the Opencast community site.*
University of Texas - Austin http://tiny.cc/BHUwg
University of Michigan - Flint http://tiny.cc/9q0fI
These two studies--like others--have found that recorded lectures correlates with improvement in student performance. There is some evidence of a decline in attendance. In the end, what is the desired outcome: perfect attendance records? higher scores on performance tests? other...?
*The Opencast community is a collaboration of higher education institutions working together to explore, define, and document podcasting best practices and technologies.