Automating iTunes U Account Creation

Question

I'm currently looking for a way to automate iTunes U account creation so that upon request, a professor or another university entity can create an account on demand.
Something that intergrates with Blackboard well would be nice, but right now I'm trying to learn more about how this is done with iTunes U.
Please respond with links to documentation or any information that may be helpful in my development efforts.

Answer 1

Apple does not manage accounts for iTunes U. There is no way, through script or otherwise, to request that Apple make or enable an account. Every site is different and handles its users differently.
Although it can seem really confusing, the really beautiful thing about the way iTunes U is setup is that it relies upon us, as admins, to verify our users using our own methods for doing so. All we do, at our respective sites, is tell Apple that we've verified a user request and that we'd like to associate a certain level of access with that request. Apple assumes we've vetted the user if we pass along a valid time stamp/shared secret (after all, only an admin and Apple know the shared secret).
I think what you're looking for is a way to take a faculty request for access to iTunes U, verify that the request does indeed come a faculty member, and give that faculty member access to iTunes U as an editor of content. This is normally the role of what Apple calls a "transfer CGI script" that you compose. The admin guide shows a typical transfer CGI, written in Java, that issues an "admin" credential for iTunes U. That script can be modified to give other kinds of access. If Java is not your forte, Apple provides other code sample (C, Python, Perl, shell script) that work similarly. Alternatively, there are a handful of Blackboard plugins that associate Blackboard access with a specific iTunes U credential. I am not a Blackboard guy, so I'll have to defer to others on that.