Little is known about the learners who download iTunes U resources but do not belong to the Higher Education institutions that provide them. This paper presents the first full profile of the external iTunes U learner and their practices and opinions of the materials they download. The data was gathered through a large survey (over 2000 responses) carried out over two years using the iTunes U site from The Open University. It shows that external iTunes U learners are very different from the internal users and practices described in the literature so far: there are more men than women, mostly middle-aged, and they use the resources mostly for personal reasons. Despite the fact that respondents used the iTunes U site from a distance university, the paper argues that the respondents are comparable to external learners who use resources from other iTunes U sites. This profile of the iTunes U user provides a clearer picture of the target listener and can help inform and improve the materials design and delivery strategies for iTunes U as an independent learning tool and Open Educational Resources (OER) in general. The article also proposes areas for further research and argues for more studies into external learners' use of podcasting resources.

Highlights

• First large scale survey of iTunes U independent learners.

• Most learners are aged 25–54 and in full time employment.

• Users access learning resources on iTunes U mostly because of personal interest.

• Materials designed for distance learning may lead to higher downloads and ratings.

• Better knowledge of users should lead to better material design.

Keywords

adult learning · distance education · evaluation of CAL systems · iTunes U · Lifelong Learning · media in education · OER design · OER research · telelearning