1. Create a good description for your show.
2. Make sure you have quality metadata on each track.
3. Link back to Vanderbilt and your website.
4. Customize your badge.

1. Create a good description for your show.
Provide a few sentences describing your content. Aside from the obvious usefulness of this information, it will also improve search results.

To edit the description:

1. Navigate to your show.
2. Click "Edit Page" in the tools box in the upper-right corner of your show.
3. Under "Description" click the pencil icon.
4. Enter your description.
5. Click "End Editing" in the tools box.

2. Make sure you have quality metadata on each track.
Metadata is the descriptive information attached to every podcast. Is your metadata accurate and useful? Is it consistent? Providing accurate information about podcasts assists users and is critical to the iTunes U service. Having descriptive metadata helps users find your content on Google and the library digital archive.

Suggestions for metadata fields:
- NAME: is for the track's title. "October 19 Lecture" is too vague whereas "A Conversation with Celebrated Filmmaker Charles Burnett" is more descriptive.
- ARTIST: is for the Instructor or speaker name. If the class has a guest speaker, use Artist for the guest speaker and Album Artist for the Instructor. It is very important to identify speakers, separating them with a comma. For example: John Lacks
- YEAR: is the year the recording was made.
- ALBUM: is for the name of the podcast series. Example: InterVU - Podcasts; Vanderbilt Law School - 2009 JetLaw Symposium
- ALBUM ARTIST: (optional) is for the Instructor, Department, or Organization. For example: Jay Clayton or Vanderbilt Kennedy Center would both be suitable, just be consistent.
- GENRE: should be set as Vanderbilt University. This will ensure our audience knows where the podcast came from.
- COMMENTS: is for a brief description of your content, add a website reference, your email address or other critical keywords. Make notes about the content that your listener might need to know. Additional information such as assignment details, upload information and historical background can also be included. Examples: Professor Skinner discusses the evolution of special effects from handmade models to 3D computer animation; Lecture recorded on April 15, 2006; This recording contains lectures 1 and 2 (Note: There is a 255 character maximum.)
- GROUPING: should be used to add any keywords to the file. Please limit to no more than 12 keywords. For example: Jena 6, Vanderbilt football, Abolition, Twitter, D2-Receptor BP
- LYRICS PANE: For podcasts and other content, you could include a transcript to support hearing disabled learners, a summary, a list of support resources, text for a speech, text of a poem, or other information. Note: Lyrics pane is not available for video.

How to update your metadata:
NOTE: iTunes U does not allow you to change metadata once a track has been uploaded. You will need to fix locally and re-upload.

1. Navigate to your show.
2. Select 'Get Tracks' to download all tracks (or use existing local copies)
3. Once downloaded, locate them in your iTunes library and edit their metadata (Right-click/Option-click > Get Info > Info tab), using the suggestions above.
4. Re-upload to iTunes U.
5. Delete the old tracks.

Hint: Save time by selecting multiple tracks when fixing Artist and Album info.

3. Link back to Vanderbilt and your website.
As an editor, you can add links to relevant websites. Every show should have a link back to the main Vanderbilt homepage, in addition to a department-specific link.

To add links:

1. Navigate to your show.
2. Click "Edit Page" in the tools box in the upper-right corner of your show.
3. In the links box (located under the tools box) click the '+' button.
4. Fill out the title and URL fields for your link.
5. Click "End Editing" from the tools box.

4. Customize your badge.
Customizing the badge allows you to brand your show and draws attention to it when people are navigating iTunes U.
The only requirements we have for badges is that they are square, and ideally 300 pixels by 300 pixels. They should also contain some sort of Vanderbilt theme or branding, if possible.

To change your badge:

1. Navigate to your show.
2. Click "Edit Page" in the tools box in the upper-right corner of your show.
3. On the existing badge, find and click the up-arrow button.
4. On the upload screen, browse to the badge you want to use and upload it.
5. iTunes U will refresh with the new badge. Click "End Editing".

Miscellaneous Style and Usability Tips

• Read Apple's "Creating Content for iPod + iTunes" document.
• Visit Apple's Content Creators support forum.
• Don't create too many tabs. This makes content hard to navigate, and since subscriptions are tab-specific it makes the subscription process more difficult
• Make sure there's no missing values in the default metadata fields: Name, Artist, Album

Content courtesy of Penn State University.