Online Education

Online education is flourishing in Australia and is set to grow at 24.3% in the next 12 months, twice as quickly as any other industry, according to a report by business information analysts, IBIS World.

The growth has several key driving factors: increasing acceptance of online education as an valid alternative to traditional face-to-face teaching, strong uptake of broadband internet services, improved resources and teaching methods (real-time lecturing, podcasts, webcams, virtual labs), and the economic downturn.

The sector’s biggest advantage, however, is convenience: being able to study and learn anytime, anywhere.

Open Universities Australia (OUA), which is owned by Curtin, Griffith, Macquarie, Monash, RMIT, and Swinburne universities, and the University of South Australia, is Australia’s largest provider of online university degrees.

Growing Online Trend

Since its inception in 1993 more than 120,000 people have studied with OUA. Last year OUA’s graduate numbers topped 28,000, an increase of 12% on the previous year. This year, undergraduate enrolment grew by 22.5% while postgraduate increased by 27%.

OUA Chief Executive Stuart Hamilton expects the trend to continue.

“Online education remains a key development area for Australia’s education industry, with new technology permeating all areas of education and providing lucrative opportunities to attract additional students,” he said.

“Working adults are a key market for online education, and courses catering to this group are taking off. The post-graduate market is growing particularly quickly and we expect online education as a whole will benefit from the current recession as more people, both employed and unemployed, will look to update their skills and boost their chances of getting – or keeping – a job. Popular choices will include professional development courses and post-graduate options which qualify students for future career advancement.”

Diversity of Choice

OUA offers 1,000 units and 90 qualifications in arts, humanities and social sciences, business, education, health, information technology, law, and science from 18 Australian tertiary institutions. Students can opt for a single unit or take on a full degree.

Online MBA programs, introduced in 2008, attracted 500 enrolments in their first year and numbers are up by 80% this year.

Today, 27% of OUA courses are fully online, 39% are web dependent while 18% are web supplemented and 17% are print only.

While domestic students make up the majority of people studying with OUA, Mr. Hamilton says international enrolment has seen steady growth of between 4 to 5% year-on-year.

Cutting Edge Distance Education

Charles Sturt University (CSU), the first university in Australia to have its courses supported online, has 22,000 students enrolling in distance education courses each year. Some 2,000 internationals elect to study this way.

CSU is Australia’s largest distance education provider, offering hundreds of courses and specialisations via Distance Education, and their track record is second to none.

Senior Lecturer in Information Technology, Dr. Barney Dalgarno, says they have all the infrastructure in place.

“Every subject has a solid package of materials that is sent to students. Some of those are printed material, on other subjects it’s a combination of print, plus CD-ROMs, plus online support,” he said.

Online support runs from online forums, wikis, and blogs to podcasts and extensive online library resources.

‘Spectacular’ Resources

Master of Education student Kathleen Corrigan, a Canadian, described the library resources as “quite spectacular”.

“I got very engaged in exploring what was available electronically,” she said, “and indeed I found an awful lot of articles that went beyond the scope of the courses ... it’s so much better than going to a university library.”

Educational Alternative

Online learning provides an educational alternative for students beyond the traditional university age range of 18 to 25 years. Stuart Hamilton says most of OUA’s students are between 25 to 39 years old, and almost 70% are female. But, he adds, they also have 18 year-olds and 60 year-olds (and over!) studying with them.

“The lifestyle profiles of OUA students include professionals with no time to attend on-campus classes (most of them already possess a tertiary education and are studying for career advancement), and part-time or unemployed students, including stay-at-home mothers aiming to get back into the workforce, young adults and university students.”

As technology becomes more and more entrenched in tertiary education and more people discover the flexibility of online learning (never again being late for a lecture!), the sector is primed to continue expanding.