Is iTunes U for You?

Before his lectures are recorded in front of his actual class, Lewin performs three dry runs: one 10 days before, another five days before and the last the morning of the lecture. The first dry run, he says, almost always takes more time than the 50 minutes available for class. So, he restructures the lecture. "That can be quite time-consuming," Lewin says. "You cannot simply delete the last 10 to 15 minutes."

The end result is a class that even a physics novice could follow. As he moves quickly through his lecture, Lewin is well aware that he has an audience beyond students in the classroom. When he demonstrates a tuning fork to the class, for example, he does so for those at home, too, by speaking directly to the camera. He is careful to print large enough on the chalkboard so that, when the camera zooms in, even those watching on an iPod can make out what he has written.

"You have to prepare enormously if you're going to teach this way," says Lewin.

But judging by the inconsistent quality of the classes offered through iTunes U, not all professors who have posted courses prepare as much as Lewin does. Unlike Lewin's courses, some iTunes U classes are audio only, making it difficult to follow certain lectures that can last more than an hour.

To make the online classes more valuable, the New Jersey Institute of Technology encourages its professors to record their classes specifically for iTunes U. Live classes often fail online because faculty members have a difficult time controlling the classroom environment in ways that are necessary for those viewing the lecture from a distance, says Blake Haggerty, the institute's assistant director for institutional design.

"In a live classroom, there may be talk that has nothing to do with the course, such as an assignment being delayed," says Haggerty. "Discussions like that don't matter to someone not enrolled in the class."

As iTunes U grows in popularity, universities will need to pay more attention to the quality of the content they are placing there, says Mayadas, of the Sloan Consortium. "There's still an experimental nature to iTunes U, so users are willing to overlook problems."

Maybe so, but for many people, a course downloaded from iTunes may be the only interaction they ever have with a particular university. Ricky Fernandez, who has sampled several courses on iTunes U, including some from well-known universities, says he has been surprised by how little effort was put into designing them for use on an iPod. In some videos, he says, it is difficult to hear instructors, while in others it is impossible to read what they write on the blackboard.

"If I paid for the classes, I would have asked for my money back," says Fernandez, a student at Hartnell College, a two-year school in California.

OREN SIMANTOB IS A SENIOR PRE-MED STUDENT AT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY, but this fall his favorite course is an iTunes U physics course taught by MIT's Lewin.

"To be honest, he does it better than anyone else here," says Simantob. "All the lecture classes here are 300 people. So there is no engagement. Even online, Lewin is engaging." Sometimes, Simantob adds, he skips classes and watches Lewin's lectures on his iPhone.

One downside, though, says Benjamin Cooper, a freshman physics major at Boston University, is that "you can't ask questions." Cooper says that if he has difficulty understanding a concept, "I usually look it up on Google or Wikipedia."