Charles Sturt University (CSU) will enter a new, dynamic phase of online learning when it launches CSU Interact across all its campuses in January 2008.

 

CSU Vice-Chancellor and President, Professor Ian Goulter, said the introduction of CSU Interact will provide CSU students with a learning environment for the 21^st century and maintain CSU at the forefront of the learning and teaching environment.

 

“It is not just the next stage of the evolution of our current online learning environment; it’s a dynamic new innovation across the University,” Professor Goulter said.

 

“CSU Interact will become a defining characteristic of this University’s learning environment, and our students will remember their learning and find it useful, vibrant and exciting because of the capacity of CSU Interact to contribute to the experience we provide to our students.”

 

The new software development will bring together a number of learning and research tools into one online site to enhance the quality of learning at CSU by offering a flexible, integrated environment. ‘Wikis’, ‘blogs’, forums, online chat rooms, email and file storage are a few of the tools that can be made available to all CSU staff and students.

 

Professor Goulter said, “how CSU Interact is used is really up to the imagination of our staff and students. It has the potential to really unleash the creativity of our teachers and our students.

 

“CSU Interact will enhance interaction in the online environment for our on-campus students and complement their interaction in their on-campus lectures and tutorials. It will also provide consistency between our on-campus students and our distance education students, because they will be studying on the same learning platform. As they move from on-campus to distance education - as we know they are doing all the time - they’ll find a common platform and a consistent learning experience,” Professor Goulter said.

 

Associate Professor Marian Tulloch, Director of CSU’s Centre for Enhancing Learning and Teaching (CELT) said CSU Interact will also provide an integrated online environment for learning and teaching, research, administration, and project management.

 

“CSU is the first Australian university to implement an open source online learning environment. CSU Interact uses the Sakai platform, an evolving community source system that allows greater flexibility and growth in services. CSU is one of over 120 universities worldwide that are constantly expanding and refining Sakai. This participation in the development of Sakai ensures that, because it can be customised for CSU, there is greater flexibility in its use for the University.