The university is the first in New Zealand to feature on iTunes U, along with six Australian universities which all joined the website yesterday. Previously, iTunes U has been largely limited to United States universities and colleges.
iTunes U is an area of the online iTunes Store which contains free material from universities around the world such as lectures, laboratory demonstrations and campus tours.
University of Otago director of information technology services Mike Harte said inclusion on iTunes U gave the university the opportunity to reach "millions" of potential users and viewers around the world.
"A lot of young people today, and even not-so-young, have iTunes installed on their computer."
iTunes is a digital media player application used for playing and organising music and video files.
It also connects users to the online iTunes Store to purchase and download digital music, music videos and podcasts.
Otago University had already added more than 100 audio and video files to the site and that number was expected to keep growing, Mr Harte said.
The clips include professorial and public lectures, Marama Hall lunchtime concerts and wildlife documentaries produced by natural history film-making students, and were an opportunity for the university to showcase its teaching and research.
The university had been experimenting with podcasting, which was proving to be very popular with students, he said.
In a pilot trial, seven lecture theatres have been fitted with recording equipment and lecturers could then upload their lecture on to a podcaster. Students were able to log in to a dedicated website and listen to lectures on their computer, or they could download them on to an iPod or other MP3 player to listen to later.
Lectures from the first two papers to participate in the trial had been downloaded 140,000 times, Mr Harte said.
The majority of students were using the podcast lectures for revision purposes, rather than as a way to skip lectures, he said.
