By Charles Sturt University Vice-Chancellor, Professor Cliff Blake in Sydney, NSW

In recent months, much media and political attention has been focused on the social and economic disadvantages of regional Australia. Charles Sturt University, as NSW’s largest regional University, has been acutely aware of these disadvantages for many years and through a variety of means we have sought to redress them.

One disadvantage that shows up each year is that HSC students in our regional high schools do less well on average at the HSC than their city cousins. While the reasons for this weaker performance are complex, my University believes that isolation and lack of a rich range of learning materials are major factors.

In 1996 we realised that the Internet could be a means of evening out the HSC playing field between country and city.

We approached the Minister for Education and Training, the Honourable John Aquilina and proposed the development of a website to support HSC students.

Mr Aquilina immediately and enthusiastically recognised the huge potential and benefits of such a site. In fact, he was well ahead of us seeing what eventually will be a mechanism to enable students in schools all over the state to have available to them the full range of HSC subjects. From the outset, he supported the HSC Online’s development – in the way that really counts - namely by ensuring a major commitment of government funding to the project.

From what was an idea in 1996, we are now the largest and, more importantly, most heavily used educational website in Australia.

This has been achieved by a remarkably productive, enduring and successful relationship between Charles Sturt University and the Department of Education and Training.

Let me give you some indication of how successful this development has been.

At a time when the most powerful companies in Australia and overseas have been unable to make their forays into the ‘dot com’ world successful, CSU and DET have created an online educational ‘dot public benefit’ that is resoundingly successful.

For example, during October last year (that is the month prior to the start of the HSC) well over 1 million pages were delivered from the HSC Online site. This surpasses the largest youth website in Australia - the ABC’s Triple J. In other words, an educational website out competed the most popular rock website in Australia.

During October 2000, 50% of the traffic occurred outside of formal school hours, with an amazing 15% of the traffic occurring between 11.00 pm and 6.00 am. While we may have some insomniac NSW HSC students, this figure also reflects the international traffic from over 50 different countries that access the site 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Today, we are here to launch the new HSC Online site and I am proud to say that it represents a new site in more than just the new HSC curriculum it serves.

The new site uses the leading edge expertise and technology that my University provides to the HSC online project.

As you have seen, the new site delivers learning resources via audio and video. It also allows students across the State to share their concerns, ask questions and offer solutions to their fellow HSC students, using online forum software developed in my University. Software that is far more sophisticated than anything that is available commercially.

The new site continues to harness the unparalleled expertise of DET’s subject specialists and Charles Sturt University’s technology to provide an online educational experience that evens out the HSC playing field for HSC students and teachers across the State, whether they are in Moree, Bourke or Ballina.

On behalf of my University and the regional communities we serve, I would like to publicly thank the Minister and his Department for their courage in 1996 to join with CSU and leap into the relatively unknown world of the Internet. Together we have developed an educational website whose impact on students and teachers is incomparable in Australia and possibly the world.

I hope that our partnership will go from strength to strength and serve generations of HSC students and teachers well into the 21^st century.

NSW HSC Online is a great achievement of the public sector, demonstrating how a collaboration between NSW Department of Education and Training, Charles Sturt University, the Office of the Board of Studies and the Professional Teachers’ Council NSW, all public institutions working together, can provide for the benefit of the people of NSW.