THE secret life of plants will be revealed in the latest iTunes U course offered through La Trobe University’s Bundoora campus.
The university is the first in Australia to provide course content on iTunes, allowing a worldwide audience to access lectures and course material through the Apple iTunes platform.
It has added the first-year subject, plant science, to iTunes by offering lectures and readings every week during the second semester.
In the past semester, La Trobe offered six courses on iTunes and had more than 100,000 subscribers with more than 2.3 million downloads of material, according to university spokesman Matt Smith.
He said the plant science course would be featured on the website for AgriBio, the centre for agribioscience, a $288 million joint venture between the university and the Victorian Department of Primary Industries.
Professor Terry Spithill, the co-director of AgriBio, said iTunes would make the plant science course accessible globally.
‘‘Research in this area is a core part of our work at AgriBio that is addressing the key challenges facing global crop and food production,’’ he said.
The university’s senior deputy vice-chancellor, John Rosenberg, said the university was committed to be at the ‘‘forefront of developments in online digital education’’.
‘‘iTunes U courses bring all relevant material together to make it simple for anyone who wants to study a subject, however complex or challenging it might be,’’ he said.
