LA TROBE University has released its latest offering on iTunes: a course on sports economics.
While Melbourne sports fans were following the London Olympics, iTunes users from around the world have taken the opportunity to learn about such things as how governments use taxpayers’ money to bid for sports events such as the Olympics and the FIFA World Cup.
With a touch of their iPad screen, they can also use the course, run by the university’s Economics lecturer, Dr Liam Lenten, to delve into the economics of sports broadcasting.
The addition of the course to the iTunes U platform follows the huge response to the university offering six courses on iTunes earlier this year.
The university’s innovative move, an Australian first, attracted 100,000 subscribers to the initial courses. About half of those subscribers came from the US, the university’s media spokesman Matt Smith said.
The most popular courses were Ancient Greece: Myths, Art and War with 46,478 subscribers so far, and Principles of Physics, with 40,424 subscribers.
It also had more than 2.3 million downloads of lectures and material.
The lectures are made up of written materials, in PDF for, plus edited video and audio – “with all the boring bits cut out”, said Dr Lenten.
Other La Trobe subjects offered in iTunes include Australian Aboriginal History, Press and Society, Genres in Children’s Literature, and the European Union in the New Millennium.
On iTunes this semester La Trobe offers The Roman World and Fiction for Young Adults (including the Twilight series and The Hunger Games).
Dr Lenten said the iTunes courses did not provide accreditation but they were free to all and were selected for their general interest appeal.
He previously had 10,000 hits for a podcast about a study about changes to rules governing the extra time and penalty shootouts in soccer.
