As more than 60 000 Year 12 students continue sitting their New South Wales Higher School Certificate exams this month, most of them would have accessed the NSW HSC Online resource. 

Charles Sturt University, which initiated and developed the website in collaboration with the NSW Department of Education and Training, will this week present the web-based project as an example of best practice at the E-Learn 2005 - World Conference on E-Learning in Corporate, Government, Healthcare, & Higher Education, being held in Canada. 

The conference paper NSW HSC Online: A Challenging Educational Enterprise was nominated as an example of best practice by Conference organisers. Co-authored by Professor Lyn Gorman, CSU Dean, Faculty of Arts, and education lecturer Bob Dengate, the paper highlights exemplary features of the HSC Online website which, in the month leading up to the examinations, delivered almost 2 million pages to students. 

The NSW HSC Online project is approaching its first decade and is considered a unique enterprise offering high quality resources to all students studying for the HSC. 

The educational website provides student and teacher resources for nearly 50 subject areas, including Vocational Education Training areas. When first launched the project was heralded for “levelling the playing field” and giving everyone access to quality resources especially students in rural and remote regions. Online forums and chat rooms are a feature of the site allowing diverse student and teacher groups from across the State to meet and discuss issues. 

The internationally respected E-Learn conference, also in its 10th year, has attracted more than 1 000 participants from over 60 countries. It is organised by the Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE) and co-sponsored by the International Journal on E-Learning.

The annual conference is being held this week from Tuesday, 25 October to Friday 28 October, in Vancouver, Canada.