Considering Itunes U and need more info

Question

Our school is trying to find a good solution to our issue of sharing audio files for class use. The itunes feature that allows you to share your music on the network is essentially what we need but since our campus is broken up into different networks, that won't work because students can't see what faculty share. My question is if Itunes U allows for all files to be downloaded or can some be able to be played but not copied down to the persons machine? This would allow students in a class to listen to audio for reference for a class without grabbing a copy of it for their own personal use.
Thanks in advance for any help you can give on this.

Answer 1

Bkitty,
First, love the name. Fun choice!
Nextly, here is what I tell people who are considering iTunes U ... when you go with iTunes U, you're basically buying the synergy that exists between the iTunes Store and the iPod and using it for your own educational aims. While iTunes U can stream content ... sort of ... that isn't really what it's designed to do.
In my experience, iTunes U is really being driven by students. They are telling us how they want to learn ... they want to use the iPod (and iTunes generally) as an educational tool/opportunity. The reality is that they are going to do this with or without us. For example, when I got involved in iTunes U, I found out that students in our College of Medicine unapologetically recorded lectures and distributed them ... and there was no attempt to get faculty permission to do so (they were running a kind of "black market" of recorded lectures ... trading "this" for "that" lecture ... if someone could attend a lecture, he/she would trade a recording of it for one that had to be missed). And that system was starting to move into other departments. So the nifty thing about iTunes U is that it gave us the opportunity to give the customers (that is, the students) what they want -- the ability to review lectures/content offline in the same way that they sample the latest music.
It is just the opposite with faculty members. They often want the (supposed) control that streaming offers. I say "supposed" because any determined student can grab streamed content and redistribute it. I do understand that faculty members have valid concerns ... their primary concern is that they want to use materials in a "fair use" way -- and they want to know that they themselves are not willfully distributing it. There are often other pedagogical reason certain faculty members resist iTunes U.
However, whenever I discuss iTunes U with any faculty member, I always point out the argument that makes the iTunes Store the biggest seller of music in the USofA ... virtual or real ... that is, students generally want to get content from an authoritative source .. and if a faculty member uses iTunes U, he or she will have the greatest control over its quality and content. The iTunes Store is the biggest seller of music in the USofA because it provides a great end-user experience ... it is just simpler to pony up 99 cents and buy something from Apple than to go through the hassle of using a P2P client (and hunt for the best quality recording). Similarly, when students can get content from iTunes U, they stop trying to do things their way and are extremely happy to download what faculty members are willing to produce. The quality of lectures/recordings/podcasts is, therefore, left entirely in faculty hands.