Online courses are university award courses in which all units or subjects are delivered and all interactions between staff and students are conducted via the Internet.
Key findings
- The survey found that there were 207 fully online courses offered by 23 Australian universities. Sixty-five of these courses (31 per cent) are delivered only by online mode.
- The majority (90 per cent) of online courses are at postgraduate level. In general, postgraduate online courses show a tendency towards specialised courses rather than generalist qualifications.
- Over a quarter of online courses are in the field of Management and Commerce (55 courses). Education represents a further 35 courses and Health 32 courses. The remaining 85 courses are spread across 1) Natural and Physical Sciences, 2) Information Technology, 3) Engineering and Related Technologies, 4) Agriculture, Environmental and Related Studies, 5) Society and Culture, 6) Creative Arts and 7) Mixed Programs.
- There is little duplication reported of online courses offered. The only duplication of courses is as follows: five universities offer online Graduate Diplomas in e-Commerce or e-Business and four universities offer online Graduate Certificates in Online Learning or Flexible Learning.
Online units are subjects or course components, in which at least some of the content is delivered and/or some of the interaction is conducted via the Internet. This may be optional or compulsory.
Web-supplemented units are units in which participation online is optional for the student. Web-dependent refers to units in which some online participation is compulsory. Fully online units contain no face-to-face component.
Key findings
- The use of the Internet in university units ranges from a high of 99 or 100 per cent of units in seven universities to a low of 9 per cent in one university. All universities are employing the Web to some extent for teaching and learning purposes.
- Universities reported that 50 704 of their units (54 per cent) have content available on the Web.
- The most prevalent form of online delivery was Web-supplemented with 46 per cent of units. Fully online units represent a small percentage of units, i.e. 1.4 per cent, (0.8 per cent of undergraduate units, 2.7 per cent of postgraduate units).
- The discipline areas that have the highest percentage of fully online units are: Management and Commerce with 2.6 per cent fully online units, Education 2.5 per cent, Information Technology 2.3 per cent and Health 2.2 per cent.
- The discipline areas that make least use of the Web are Food, Hospitality and Personal Services (56.6 per cent make No Use of the Web), Creative Arts (55.7 per cent), and Society and Culture (52.1 per cent).
- Information and Technology (I.T.) units appear to make the highest use of the Web, compared with other discipline areas; 40.5 per cent of I.T. units are either fully online or Web-dependent.
Online services consist of university services and information, which students can access via the Internet.
Key findings
- Most universities (87.5 per cent) provide an Intranet, which can be accessed by all students, with 70 per cent providing access to the Intranet from off campus.
- A high percentage of universities (92.5 per cent) have made their university handbook and/or calendar available online.
- Online access to university libraries is high. Ninety-five per cent of universities provide access to their university library catalogue via the Internet, 90 per cent provide access to online journals and monographs and 82.5 per cent provide online reservation of books.
- Universities use a number of commercial and in-house courseware management systems, sometimes several systems within the same institution, the most frequently used of which are: WebCT (29 universities), in-house systems (20 universities) and Blackboard (17 universities).
- Online registration and enrolment services are not widespread. Forty per cent of universities offer online registration or enrolment for existing students; only 27.5 per cent offer this service for new students and 30 per cent provide online variation of enrolment.
- Online payment of fees is also not yet widely available, with only 30 per cent of universities offering this facility to all students.
- Online learning support for students is available in 57 per cent of universities and 45 per cent provide online training in ICT skills.
Discipline areas such as Management and Commerce, Education, Health and Information Technology are more likely to have developed fully online units and courses. This may be due to the fact that, at postgraduate level, many of these students are 'earner-learners' who combine full-time work with study. In addition, discipline areas that require more practical and laboratory work, such as Creative Arts or the physical sciences, are less likely to provide online education, possibly because these discipline areas do not lend themselves as easily to online learning or because students do not have ready access to the necessary technology.
Universities seem to have made significant progress in providing online services and information to students, especially in library services. However, there is a time lag in the availability of online services in areas such as online student registration and payment of fees.
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