iTunes U Guidelines Creating and managing your public site

Overview

Welcome to iTunes U, the world’s largest digital catalog of free education content. Millions of people across the globe visit iTunes U every day using a Mac, PC, iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch. Leveraging the familiar interface of the iTunes Store, iTunes U offers over 500,000 audio, video, PDF, and ePub assets as well as full courses that cover every imaginable topic. This extraordinary content comes from hundreds of colleges and universities, K–12 school districts, and respected museums, libraries, and public broadcasting stations. And now you’re a part of it.

Following these guidelines will help you create an iTunes U provider page that’s well organized and inviting. The more engaging and well constructed your site is, the more likely it is to attract and retain users.

ContentsOverview 1Creating your collections 2Creating courses 4 Customizing your provider page 5Putting it all together 7

iTunes U GuidelinesCreating and managing your public site

2

Creating your collections

Building great collections is the key to attracting an audience to your iTunes U provider page. A collection is a grouping of downloadable audio, video, PDF, or ePub files that focus on a single topic or concept. These files, or “items,” can be lectures, speeches, demonstrations, exhibits, study guides, or anything else that’s unified around a common concept. That concept can be anything from a lecture series (such as Saturday Morning Physics) or educational podcasts (such as Ask a Biologist) to primary source resources (like a collection of historic films). It’s important to create a focused theme around which to organize your collection, include good metadata that describes your collection, and provide appealing artwork that pulls it all together.Create focusBuilding a focused collection helps visitors navigate your content easily and find what they’re looking for. As you build your collections, look for opportunities to split groups of items into more specific collections. It’s the difference between an unwieldy collection of 300 items labeled “Science,” and smaller, easier-to-navigate collections such as “Plant Life” or “Organic Chemistry.”

On the other hand, don’t be too granular. A collection page should never be used for only a single item. Instead, look for similarities in items that can bring them together into a single collection, such as “How to Start a Business” or “Authors Discussing Authors.” This makes it easier for users to discover related or sequential content. And if your content expands over time (with additional lectures, for instance), a user can subscribe to the collection and automatically receive updates as you post new items.

Collection too broad Collection too specific Focused collection

Science Lecture 10: Molecular Biology 1 Introduction to Biology

Military History Waterloo.epub The Battles of Napoleon

Below are some good examples of focused collections:

Theodore Roosevelt — His Life and Times on Film Library of Congress

Elements of a collection

Collection title

Item name

Collection summary

Item description

Collection author

Item length

Philosophy TalkStanford University

The Free Will Theorem LecturesPrinceton University

iTunes U GuidelinesCreating and managing your public site

3

Include good metadata Metadata is information about a digital file that’s embedded in the file’s structure. It describes what the content is and helps surface the content through search. Because most people look for iTunes U content through search, it’s critical to be thorough and precise when entering your metadata.

Keep the following in mind as you enter your metadata:

• Pay close attention to the title, author, summary, and keywords tags at the item and collection levels of your feed because these are the fields that iTunes indexes for search. This metadata—along with your art—is your product packaging. It affects whether your content shows up in relevant searches and determines whether users who find your content are likely to click the Subscribe button.

• Create a specific title for your collection and for the items within your collection. A collection called Lecture Series is vague and won’t attract subscribers, no matter how compelling the content. However, the title Lectures from Technology Innovators is descriptive and inviting. Because long titles will likely not appear in full, keep important words at the beginning of the title. Check the user interface for iPhone and iPod touch; you’ll want to be sure that enough of the title shows while the content is playing.

• Take advantage of the collection summary tag—your chance to tell potential subscribers all about your content. Describe your subject matter, media format, and other relevant information so they know what they’ll be getting when they subscribe.

Tip: Consider making a list of the most relevant search terms that you want your item to match and build them into your summary. The following summary from the collection History of Jazz incorporates these best practices:

These programs are created by Dr. Gordon Vernick, Associate Professor of Music at Georgia State, and produced by WMLB 1690 Atlanta ‘Voice of the Arts.’ Each segment is intended to shed light on important individual creative jazz musicians and specific movements/genres within the jazz canon. They are intended for jazz lovers and those who are merely interested in this important American musical art form.

• Minimize the use of keywords. Almost nothing belongs in the keywords tag that isn’t better handled in the title or the summary tag. Keywords are best saved for common misspellings of your name or title so that users can find your content through search despite spelling errors. To prevent the overuse of keywords, iTunes indexes only the first 12 keywords found in this tag.

• To make your content easy to find, you’ll want to include a category so that users can find what they’re browsing for in the pull-down category menu in iTunes U or from the category listing in your provider page.

Provide compelling artworkEach of your collections has its own page within your iTunes U provider page. One of the most important elements of that page is the collection artwork—an image that appears next to the collection title. (A smaller version of that artwork also appears in search results.)

The artwork for your collection should provide insight into the collection’s unifying concept. Good art communicates the value of the collection with a simple picture and a few words. You can also use artwork at the item level.

Though not required, consider including your institution’s badge, crest, or logo in collection artwork. It helps to distinguish your content when it’s featured in the iTunes U home page or in an iTunes Store search.

Be sure to create a graphic for your collection or item that’s recognizable when scaled down to 50 by 50 pixels. Apple recommends a JPEG file of 600 by 600 pixels for your cover art; do not exceed this size, as the artwork won’t render properly in smaller versions.

Creating courses

Now you can invite instructors to create courses that you can include on your iTunes U provider page. Users select courses to download from your provider page onto the iTunes U app for iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch.

Courses allow instructors to add context and structure to all of the great educational content available in places like the App Store, the iBookstore, iTunes U, and the web. Instructors can also upload videos, audio, presentations, handouts, and original materials. And they can communicate directly with everyone taking the course through posts, notifications, and assignments.

To invite instructors to create courses, add them as contributors to Public Site Manager. Then send the URL for iTunes U Course Manager, a web-based tool used to create courses. When a course is ready to be shared, get the course link from the instructor, add it to Public Site Manager, and publish your site.

For more information, see “iTunes U Guidelines: Creating your course.”

iTunes U GuidelinesCreating and managing your public site

4

Collection artwork example:

Alice in Wonderland by Lewis CarrollUSF Lit2Go

iTunes U categories

iTunes U GuidelinesCreating and managing your public site

5

Customizing your provider page

You can control how your institution is presented within the iTunes Store. You can customize your main banner image, feature new or important content, and build a browsing structure that allows users to explore your content.

Site bannerIn building your provider page, a first consideration is your site banner—the large image that appears at the top of your iTunes U provider page. Your site banner is the best opportunity to create a distinctive look and feel, or brand, for your site.

For a clear, clean look and feel, Apple recommends that your banner contain an image that incorporates your proprietary colors and logo (brand), along with the name of your institution. Keep in mind that in your iTunes U page, the banner transitions from your provided imagery to a solid background, as shown above.

Tag pagesYou have the flexibility to feature and organize your content for viewing by creating tag pages. You can assign tags to collections and create a page for designated content. For example, you can create a “social science” tag or an “environment” tag and put collec-tions in those pages. A single collection can be featured in multiple tag pages, allowing you to group collections in various ways. Tag pages can be thematic or by department, or by any grouping that works for your institution.

Institution name

Institution logo

Site banner

Feature box

Elements of a provider page

iTunes U GuidelinesCreating and managing your public site

6

An example of a tag page. You can add custom artwork to make tag pages distinct.

In addition to the automatically generated feature boxes (What’s New, Top Downloads, All Courses, and Highly Rated Collections), you can create up to three additional custom-ized feature boxes in your page. They can include individual items or entire collections and can be organized to fit your institution’s needs. Some examples of customized feature boxes include Featured this Week, University of Virginia (shown below); African American History Month, Florida Department of Education; Welcome to the University, Oxford; and Student Showcase, Georgia Department of Education.

Example of a custom feature box

7iTunes U GuidelinesCreating and managing your public site

Preview and publishIt’s easy to manage the iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch versions of your site. Using a single page you can customize the look and feel of your provider page across all devices. You can make a set of changes and preview them before publishing them all at once. And you can include custom artwork for these collections.

Putting it all together

As you get ready to publish your site, keep a few key points in mind. Remember that the audience for your provider page goes far beyond the walls of your institution. People everywhere—on your campus, in your community, across the country, and around the world—browse iTunes U every day looking for something new and thought provoking. Think through the following questions before you publish your site to ensure you’ve presented the most compelling content possible:

• Is the content great?

• Is the content organized into a clear, focused collection, and does it feel complete?

• What does the collection or course teach? What is the expected learning outcome?

• Does the metadata accurately identify the content?

• How is the content presented on iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch?

• Is the artwork engaging, and does it represent the content well?

By following these guidelines, you’ll not only create a successful provider page for your institution, you’ll also help Apple promote and feature your content in the iTunes Store—giving global exposure to your world-class content.

We hope you enjoy building your site, and we look forward to discovering the great content you create. If you need additional help or guidance, visit the iTunes U support page at www.apple.com/support/itunes_u. You’ll find how-to instructions for administrators and collaborators, and you can browse the discussion boards.

© 2012 Apple Inc. All rights reserved. Apple, the Apple logo, iPad, iPhone, iPod, iPod touch, iTunes, and Mac are trademarks of Apple Inc., registered in the U.S. and other countries. iTunes U is a trademark of Apple Inc. App Store, iBookstore, and iTunes Store are service marks of Apple Inc., registered in the U.S. and other countries. Other product and company names mentioned herein may be trademarks of their respective companies. January 2012