Australian Catholic University

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Australian catholic university or ACU, it is the only one public catholic university in Australia, It was born in 1991, this university has more than 13,000 students, the university has 6 campuses located in three different regions over Australia. It is affiliated to Association of Commonwealth Universities.

The university offer different kind of courses, undergraduate, postgraduate, research higher degrees, short training courses but they only offer online programs (40) for undergraduate and postgraduate.

They have different tools to help the students, some of them can be used for online learning and blended learning, e.g. the blackboard tool (WebCT) and online library. They have a special department for the staff called Learning and Teaching Centre, to acquire the skills to teach online; in this department they have a program to teach their workers, this program includes five modules:

• Quick module: These teach the minimum knowledge of how to use the computer and basic software.
• Learning to use blackboard.
• Teaching part 1: The teachers should do this module before learning online; in the module they study needs of online learners, designing learning activities and dealing with common problems.
• Assessment: This module covers the fundamentals of assessment and some specific issues to do with online assessment.
• Teaching part 2: This is taught when the teachers; teach online one semester. This module asks you to reflect on your teaching experience and continue to develop your skills and knowledge.

This university is very interested to become a good university with the eLearning because they have a special department to educate the teachers, but they should use more tools for fully online teaching.