Study Online with Flexible University Courses
If you want flexible study, Australia’s online universities offer course structures that can fit around work and family. The details vary by provider and degree, but two things tend to make the biggest difference: shorter study periods (more start dates) and more control over when you do your weekly learning.
Unit by Unit, Not Semester Blocks
Flexible study is often supported by sequential course designs where you focus on fewer subjects at a time. This can suit online postgraduate students who are balancing study with work, because it reduces the “four subjects at once” feeling that comes with traditional semester timetables.
In more traditional models, students might take multiple units concurrently across long teaching sessions. That can mean juggling overlapping deadlines and finishing with a concentrated assessment period.
By contrast, many online programs now use shorter teaching periods and more intakes across the year. Rather than waiting for the next semester, students can often start in the next available study period and progress through one or two units at a time, depending on the course rules.
Shorter study periods can also make it easier to adjust your load. Instead of pausing for half a year, you may be able to take a single study period off and return at the next intake, subject to course availability and progression requirements.
What to check before you enroll
- Intakes: how many start dates per year the course actually offers
- Unit availability: whether the units you need run every study period or only at specific times
- Progression rules: prerequisites and sequencing that may limit “pick and choose” flexibility
An Adjustable Weekly Schedule
Much of the flexibility of online study comes from being able to choose when you watch recordings, complete readings, and work on assignments. In many units, course materials are available on demand, and weekly tasks can be completed at times that suit you.
That said, “flexible” rarely means “no schedule.” Most units still have weekly activities and firm due dates, and some include live sessions, timed quizzes, or scheduled workshops. The practical difference is that you can usually decide when you do the work within each week.
This flexibility can apply to group work as well. Some groups meet by phone or videoconference at a mutually convenient time, while others coordinate using messages and shared documents so that collaboration can happen asynchronously.
Reality check: flexibility does not reduce workload
Even when delivery is flexible, the workload is still defined by the unit’s learning outcomes and study-load expectations. For example, government guidance on tertiary study load commonly converts a subject’s total hours into a weekly expectation over the teaching period. Services Australia explains how study load can be expressed using EFTSL or hours.
Flexible Online STEM Degrees
STEM skills can take you anywhere – and now you can gain those skills anywhere, too, with Open Universities Australia’s flexible degrees.
By Brett Szmajda
The Australian Bureau of Statistics reports that just 18% of the workforce is skilled in science, technology, engineering and maths. But STEM expertise can open doors across a range of industries – as it has for Brenda Frisk.
After completing separate Bachelor degrees in Human Ecology and Education at the University of Manitoba, Canada, and a Master of Arts in Communications Technology with the University of Alberta, she forged a career building business solutions with technology at their core.
“Understand what’s important to people and you’ll create experiences they enjoy and technology that they’re going to use,” says Brenda.
Her most memorable career moments include creating an award-winning multimedia program; pitching 3D business solutions to a global aviation manufacturer while touring its enormous US campus, and working in rural Victoria to optimise a multimillion dollar water utility project designing a mobile application, which won an international award. “Each project brings a very different and exciting experience, which is part of what’s wonderful about working in STEM,“ she explains.
Now the Head of Learning Technology at Open Universities Australia (OUA), Brenda is an advocate for flexible degrees that fit a busy modern lifestyle. Providing the best flexible degrees remotely often requires ‘thinking differently’, she says. For example, rendering 3D models once required a supercomputer, but now students can gain this experience at home using cloud-based computing services on a tablet.
Bianca Braun, who studied a Master of Science in applied statistics through OUA, says being able to study whenever and wherever she wanted was key to finishing her degree. “There’s no way I would have been able to do this otherwise,” she says.
Data from OUA suggests flexible degrees have been particularly enabling for women interested in STEM. In the past three years, OUA has seen a 26% growth in females studying STEM courses, compared with a 16% growth in male numbers.
Like Brenda, Bianca wants to apply her STEM skills in a range of industries. “Every organisation has data,” she says. “My job is to tell the story behind the data.”
A STEM degree equips you with the tools to create solutions across a variety of disciplines and offers general life skills. Brenda offers this advice: consider a problem in the world you would like to fix, then use your STEM skills to tackle it.
