Downloadable lectures seem like a resource only a university student would need to use. In fact many institutions, agencies and non-profit organisations make lectures available for download on their web sites.
For students enrolled in a degree the process of printing their lecture notes is made easy through their student portal maintained and updated by the uni and teaching staff. It’s usually a matter of opening or saving the PowerPoint file and printing them out in 3, 4 and 6 per page handouts. For everyone else, sources are limited but definitely still available.
Students of Universities across Australia can access online lectures to the point where it is the norm, with students feeling irritation if notes are not provided as a resource. Universities like Melbourne Uni, Swinburne, Monash, ANU, ACU, Tasmania Uni, Queensland Uni, Adelaide Uni and Deakin among others all provide an online hub from where lectures can be uploaded by staff to be downloaded by students.
Educational institutions have even started making lectures available for the public, enabling people to take certain courses (without official recognition) online through their website, the most surprising of these is offered by Yale University in which you can study introductory courses in religion, politics, psychology, physics, to name a few.
Anyone can download lectures on a range of subjects facilitated by the rapid growth of internet and its availability, a trend toward online education and the convenience of the internet and portals as the hub for educational studies. Organisations such as the Cater-Jenkins centre have a large catalogue of lecture notes on a range of social topics such as child health, mental health, family issues and social science theory.
The easiest place to download lectures is iTunes. With thousands of Podcasts on a range of topics, there are lectures from noted and influential figures for free download to those who have installed iTunes.
There are also interactive lectures available. Initiatives such as Lectopia has allowed for videoing of lectures to be downloaded and viewed by students in their own time. The main argument against this is that students will use these to substitute going to the actual lecture. However, even with videoed lectures, a student still needs to dedicate 45 minutes to listening and watching the lecture.
For interactive lectures, where lecturers encourage questions, the student will miss out on asking their own questions in response to the subject matter. Audio lectures are also available in a similar format to Podcasts. Students being the only ones who download lectures are a thing of the past.
