Taking courses online

Online courses allow for students to complete assignments, read lectures, post work, and interact with professors and other students via the Internet.  This allows students to do their work from anywhere they feel most comfortable and at a time that is most convenient.

Important facts

The results of a survey discovered that there were 207 courses offered online from 23 Australian universities. Of these courses, 65 of them (31 per cent) were taught exclusively online.

Most of the online courses (90 per cent) are from the postgraduate level. Typically, the majority of postgraduate online courses tend to focus on specialized courses instead of the more general ones.

More than a quarter of courses being taught online came from the field of Management and Commerce (55 courses).

There are 35 courses from the field of Education and 32 from Health.  

The 85 remaining courses range among the following:

o    Creative Arts
o    Agriculture
o    Society and Culture
o    Engineering and Related Technologies
o    Natural and Physical Sciences
o    Environmental and Related Studies
o    Information Technology
o    Mixed Programs

Online units

Online units are defined as the subjects or courses that have at least some course content through some of the interaction with the professor and other students performed through the Internet.

The fields of study that offer the most fully online units included:

o    Management and Commerce
o    Education
o    Information Technology
o    Health

The fields of study that offer the least use of the web included:

o    Food, Hospitality and Personal Services
o    Creative Arts
o    Society and Culture

Information Technology has the highest use of the Internet when compared to the other fields of study.