RADFORD -- Radford University officials are brimming with excitement about a new service coming to campus in the fall: iTunes U.

The free service will allow the university to create a Web site, iTunes U at Radford University, using Apple technology to aggregate campus information and educational content.

Officials believe Radford was the first complete campus in Virginia to get approval.

With the service, professors will be able to post podcasts or vodcasts of their lectures online, called coursecasts by some in higher education. The athletics department could post audio or video clips from games. And the alumni association could use the site to post current news about campus. The possibilities are far-reaching.

Users can then download the information to their computers or to their iPods for portable listening and viewing.

"It's putting information in the path where students are," said Krista Terry, the director of RU's Technology in Learning Center.

iPods bigger than beer

An RU online survey, which netted about 1,200 responses, showed that about 49 percent of students have an iPod. It didn't ask about generic brands of mp3 players. A national survey in the spring by Student Monitor of 1,200 full-time college students showed that iPods were the most popular "in" thing on campus, just edging out beer.

Apple first launched the iTunes U service as a pilot with six universities in fall 2005. At the time, Stanford University, one of the six, garnered a lot of notice because of its public site where anyone can download professors' lectures, speeches from special lecture series and music from student groups. Stanford limits access to coursecasts to students.

Later, the University of California at Berkeley, which was not part of the initial pilot, came online with an iTunes U site that is completely public -- including its coursecasts.

"It's an incredible tool for bringing what you do on your campus to the world," said Obadiah Greenberg, the product manager for Berkeley's Educational Technology Services.

Both Berkeley and Stanford had been posting podcasts and vodcasts on their own sites years before using the iTunes U service as a way to centralize the information.

Universities throughout Virginia, such as Virginia Tech and the University of Virginia, have also posted such audio and video files to their own sites for some time. Professors at RU have only recently been using the technology, in anticipation of the new iTunes U site.

RU is one among a larger group of universities nationwide that responded to a general call by Apple in January seeking colleges interested in using the iTunes U service, after its success with the pilot six and Berkeley. Apple would not disclose the number of universities it is working with on the service.

Terry and others at RU were enthusiastic about the possibility. They plan for it to go live before classes begin in the fall.

Tech more cautious

Virginia Tech is in the contract stages with Apple for a pilot of the service, said John Moore, director of educational technologies. Tech officials have decided to proceed more cautiously than RU with the service, intending to do studies on its educational usefulness before making a stronger commitment.

Radford is expecting to use the Stanford model for its site, with some content that will be public and other information that will only be accessible with a university login and password. The latter information will likely be coursecasts and any other supporting podcasts or vodcasts that professors want their students to listen to or view for class.

John Tso, a geologist at RU, has created a handful of podcasts for a course on the geology of Virginia that he will teach to a class of teachers starting June 19. The teachers are coming from across the state to the university for two weeks, and Tso is using the podcasts to introduce them to material before they arrive.

Tso said he has approached the podcasts as radio shows that his students will listen to at home, in their cars or in their classrooms.

"If they are listening to me for 25 minutes, I better be saying something interesting," he said.

Once RU's iTunes U Web site is live, Tso could post any podcasts or vodcasts for his classes to the site. His students could then download them and use them to prepare for class or to review for an exam.

New marketing tool?

David Zuschin, a professor in the music department, used iPods and podcasts in a music-history course last year as a pilot study. In addition to podcasting his lectures, he also created tests that required students to use their iPods to listen to music and then answer questions about the composer, period and genre.

Ryan Villagran, a student in the class, said he liked the quizzes and that it was fun to use the iPods, though he wasn't sure that using them improved his own grade that much.

One concern about using the iPods in the classroom -- and in bringing the entire iTunes U architecture to campus -- is the seamless marketing of Apple products to students simply through the repeated use and exposure to the brand.

Villagran said he had thought about that in the music-history pilot course.

"Let's be honest. It's a great marketing opportunity to hit the colleges like this," he said. "But all Apple politics aside, given that the right projects are in place, and the faculty are using it appropriately, it's a great educational tool."

Todd Wilder, an education public relations manager for Apple, said the company has long provided educational tools to schools and universities and that the iTunes U project is in line with that legacy.

Wilder said he could not respond to a question about whether Apple will one day charge for the service.