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Farewell to Apple iTunes

Whether you loved or hated Apple's iTunes, it was a big step iTunes as a media player, media library, Internet radio broadcaster, and eventually as a mobile device management application. Now it is being unbundled and essentially phased out, according to press release from the latest Apple Worldwide Developer Conference.

Apple Inc. announced it as a new service and tool on January 9, 2001. It was used to play, download, and organize digital multimedia files, including music and video, on personal computers running the macOS and Windows operating systems. It forced you to purchase through the iTunes Store.

My own professional interest in it focused on iTunes U which allowed universities to offer content, including courseware (mostly lectures at first) and other "podcast" materials and even print content, in a open way. I have been writing here about iTunes since 2006.

The latest move by Apple is probably much more tied to changes in the music industry and the way consumers listen to and purchase music. Apple has been pushing users to its Apple Music subscription service, like Spotify and others. That is a better deal for them since it means a guaranteed monthly fee instead of waiting and hoping that a customer will buy songs. I have not subscribed and I have not purchased music from their store in several years, and I suspect I am not alone in that trend.

Apple is phasing out iTunes in favor of three apps called Music, TV and Podcasts. This is very much how those services are already divided on iPhones and iPads.

From what I have read, iTunes will still exist as a standalone iOS app and on Windows PCs and your previous purchases and libraries will be maintained in each new app on Mac computers.

podcasting at NJITI have not found any information on the future of iTunes U. My university, NJIT, was one of the "sweet 16" schools to be there for the launch of iTunes U in May 2007. But with iTunes version 12.7 (August 2017), iTunes U collections became a part of the Podcasts app.

NJIT stopped using their iTunes U instance several years ago. They were not alone in higher education. That is a trend that does not please me as it took away one source of open courseware. But some schools have moved that content to other MOOC platforms which offer richer environments for full course offerings.

Apple says that it will not be remotely deleting years of downloaded and purchased songs and movies, but will probably find a way to bridge, manage and access downloaded content in other ways. A clear cut-off date for iTunes has not been set.

Making Educational Content Accessible

disability symbols
You might have read earlier this year that the University of California, Berkeley started removing more than 20,000 video and audio lectures from public view that they had made freely available online. Why? It was the result of a Justice Department accessibility order requiring them to make the educational content accessible to people with disabilities.
UC Berkeley was one of the colleges in the forefront of posting to YouTube, iTunes U and their own webcast.berkeley.edu site. Accessibility for people with a wide variety of disabilities has been an issue with online courses for many years. Mostly, schools have "gotten away with it" when it comes to following requirements that largely came into focus primarily after the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) became law in 1990.
It's curious that the Justice Department’s investigation did not look at how Berkeley actually serves students with disabilities, but only the accessibility of content it offers to the public. As a result of this order the university will also require users sign in with University of California credentials to view or listen to them.
This is a scary ruling for other institutions who have been "getting away with it" and now may have to do the same as UC. 
All it took was complaints from two employees of Gallaudet University, the world's only university designed to be barrier-free for deaf and hard of hearing students. The employees said that Berkeley’s free online educational content was inaccessible to blind and deaf people because of a lack of captions, screen reader compatibility and other issues.
Unfortunately, to remedy these issues any university would need to implement measures that are very expensive to continue to make these resources available to the public. Since they were offered for free, there is really no business model that applies here other than charity. So, the immediate solution was to make them "inaccessible" to everyone by removing them. 
Berkeley can continue to offer massive open online courses on edX. They also plan to create new public content that is accessible.
One concern that many educators have is that this ruling will result in the disappearance of much Open Educational Resources.

Got MOOC? A List of Providers





Cours­era, EdX, Udac­ity are still the big names in providing Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC), but the definitions of "Open" and even "Course" have been changing since I first started listing providers on this blog. Some of the providers in the numbered list below are no longer using content that is open for reuse or sharing. And some courses are not really "courses" in the traditional definition, as they do not have assignments, grades etc. They might be thought of more as Communities or Conversations.

Although a number of these providers offer some non-English courses and almost all have enrollment open to all countries, there are more providers starting outside the United States that focus on other languages, geographical sectors and universities outside the U.S.

Here are a few providers outside the U.S. 




  • European universities have collaborated to launch a joint MOOC portal OpenupEd.eu with support from the European Commission, the initiative is the most comprehensive offering of European MOOCs

  • Open Learn - Open University (UK)

  • mooc.fr - dédié à des MOOCs francophones - a site dedicated to Francophone MOOCs




  1. Coursera

  2. EdX

  3. Udacity

  4. Curricki

  5. Udemy

  6. NovoEd first launched at Stanford as VentureLab, now private

  7. Class Central - aggregates Stanford, Coursera, MIT and Harvard led edX (MITx + Harvardx + BerkeleyX), and Udacity courses

  8. Blackboard offers its CourseSites platform for free courses and MOOCs

  9. Canvas Network - free and courses for a fee from Instructure using their Canvas LMS

  10. Open Learning Global

  11. P2PU   peer to peer university

  12. SyMynd courses from NYU, University of Washington and McGill University

  13. Carnegie Mellon University Open Learning Initiative

  14. Open Yale courses (Yale joined with Coursera in May 2013)

  15. Stanford's Free Online Courses

  16. MOOC2Degree works with public universities to offer credit-bearing MOOCs as a free, first step toward earning a degree.



The following four providers offer course materials without facilitators or discussions. A do-it-yourself course, perhaps, or a resource for teachers searching for materials to use in their own courses.





Several other sites are listing MOOC providers, though there is no definitive "one-stop" aggregation site where you can go and easily search a catalog of all the MOOCs currently available. mooc-list.com is one such site, but sites are also appearing that a commercial/advertising intent along with offering a way to search. (An example is Russian website at studymooc.org) The mooc.ca site also offers a list of open online courses of different types.


MOOC Providers

moocA lot of people now think the only providers of MOOCs are Cours­era, EdX or Udac­ity, but there are many other providers of these sometime Massive, sometimes Open online courses.

I would consider some of the providers below to not be offering MOOCs by a strict definition. Some only offer open course materials. An example are the courses offered through Apple iTunes U. Massachusetts Institute of Technology in iTunes offers dozens of free online courses, mostly in science and technology. But their iTunes U site only gives you access to downloadable lectures and materials - not a course experience with a teacher and interaction/discussion. You can also download MIT course materials directly from the MIT open courseware website if you want to have a go at the materials "on-your-own."

Most MOOCs from universities offered prior to 2012 were available from the university's own website, but in the past year, more universities are using platforms such as Coursera to host and handle registration.


  1. Open Yale courses.

  2. Carnegie Mellon University - Open Learning Initiative

  3. Class Central - aggregates Stanford, Coursera, MIT and Harvard led edX (MITx + Harvardx + BerkeleyX), and Udacity courses

  4. Coursera

  5. Curricki

  6. EdX

  7. Udacity

  8. Canvas Network - free courses from Instructure using their Canvas LMS

  9. Udemy

  10. Open Learning

  11. Open Learn - Open University (UK)

  12. P2PU

  13. SyMynd courses from NYU, University of Washington and McGill University

  14. Stanford's Free Online Courses

  15. University of the People

  16. WikiEducator

  17. Wikiversity

  18. Blackboard's CourseSites