Using technology to promote Owen, and maybe even learn something

I thought I would share a pretty interesting source of brain candy that I came across recently. Last year I was speaking with Barry D. about Stanford and a few select school’s participation in Apple’s iTunesU program. My particular interest was that Stanford and Duke Universities were offering audio versions of some of their classes online through Apple’s iTunes. By the time I graduated last May, Vanderbilt was still in the discussion phase of joining the program and it looked as if it may incorporate grad school content.

Well long story short, I remembered this conversation a few days ago and went looking to see if anything had happened with the iTunesU program at Vanderbilt. Well the good news is yes, Vanderbilt did in fact roll out some content (primarily speakers) online. The bad news is that Owen is nowhere to be found. What is even worse is that a lot of top MBA programs do have dedicated iTunesU content, or at a minimum podcasts. I personally have looked at MIT, Wharton, Chicago, and Duke’s content and have to say I am impressed. And we are not talking about a massive technological or even intellectual commitment. In fact a lot of the schools podcasts were mediocre when it came to the quality of the recording or video. Duke, who probably has the most robust offering, has their distinguished speaker series through iTunesU (the more recent are offered in both Video and Audio). They have also put their marketing events (similar to our Marketing Camp) on the service as well.

So ask yourself, what is the downside? I can’t think of any substantial ones. If Owen were to start slow and put similar offerings (like the two mentioned above) online where would we be hurting our school? I know for starters as an alumnus I would be interested to hear DSS speakers from this year. It would also give prospective students the possibility to hear the strong caliber of speakers that we can bring to Owen. What about further down the road, what about certain classes? The first day of some classes could be marketing tools in their own right. If you were a prospective student interested in HOPA, you could hear Neta’s first day of Human Capital class where she overviews the class and the reason subject matter. I think it would not only give me as a prospective an idea what class discussions were like, but also overviews of the curriculum.

But think about it for a while, because there are some really great opportunities that I think might only help the Owen brand.

I would be interested to hear your thoughts. In the meantime, if for nothing else than to just expose yourself to other school’s content check out the links below to podcast programs.

Directory of School Podcasts
Apple's iTunesU Page
Duke iTunes Link