All postgraduate courses offered at CSU are offered in both distance education and online mode; however, the degree of e-learning access varies with each subject.
The University of New South Wales (UNSW) also offers students alternatives to classroom learning, with UNSW associate professor and director of educational development and technology centre Tony Koppi claiming the institution has a big investment in e-learning.
"UNSW is one of the world's biggest users of the e-learning platform, WebCT, with about 65,000 student enrolments in online course components during 2005," Koppi said.
"UNSW also uses the iLecture system for digital recording of lectures which are then made available over the Internet. During the last year more than 3000 lectures were recorded and accessed more than 100,000 times.
"Just like online courses in WebCT, students can access these iLectures from anywhere at anytime, and two-thirds of the hits on the servers are from off campus at all times during the day and night."
Despite these universities' offerings, RMIT marketing and industry liaison manager Sharon Hughes believes if a university IT school is not meeting at least quarterly with a wide range of IT industry representatives, then it stands no chance of keeping up with rapidly changing technology requirements.
Therefore the institution's school of Computer Science and IT aims to met quarterly and includes members from senior technical professionals from large multinational organizations with a large IT function or who are IT based, along with small to medium, Australian-based IT companies.
"Recently significant contributions were made by senior IT architects from IBM, ANZ, Infosys, Bearing Point and others from the school's industry advisory committee in the development of the school's new Master's program in Enterprise Architecture," Hughes said.
"Most representatives will also be involved in teaching and assessing some of the new subjects for this program, which has been designed for IT professionals who wish to advance their career to the role of enterprise architect."
Other curriculum advancements made this year in consultation with industry included a new specialization in computer security for RMIT's existing Masters programs, along with new subjects in computer and internet forensics and mobile and wireless computing, and have proved to be popular with current students.
"Each year the school also runs an industry-led professional development program for all of its students in the areas of IT interview and resume writing skills, IT & confidentiality, public speaking, marketing and customer service, IT project management, conflict and resolution management, enterprise architecture and others," Hughes said.
Meanwhile, at Macquarie University, IT postgraduate courses being offered now try and respond to industry requirements for more 'soft skills' as well as technical expertise.
In response to this growing need, the university now offers an ICT management specialization, addressing hot areas like IT governance and enterprise management.
In addition, in 2006 a Graduate Diploma in IT will now be offered as a fully external program, and will involve regular, interactive online classes with optional on-campus weekend workshops.
But while in other courses, all students are offered a limited online presence for every unit, with lecture material and assignments accessible online, at present most classroom activity in the Masters course is still on campus.
The University of Newcastle's faculty of Science and Information Technology however now offers a range of courses for those IT professionals wishing to undertake postgraduate study, including a Master of Multimedia available Online, as well as a Master of Information Technology, Graduate Certificate and Graduate Diploma also Online.
In 2005 a Master of Advanced Information Technology was introduced to specifically target areas which will be accredited by the Australian Computer Society at Professional level.
The university is consolidating the two new programs introduced in 2005 as well as rationalizing offerings between computer science, software engineering and information technology to avoid multiple offerings of the same material.
Finally, the University of Western Sydney offers four postgraduate computing and IT courses including a Master of Computing in Networking and a Master of IT in Web engineering and design.
The Master of Computing in Networking is designed to prepare computing professionals and recent graduates for work in the computing and information technology industries at the highest levels, while the Master of IT in Web engineering and design is organized to address all issues related to Web sites, applications and services development.
Also on offer for 2006 is a Graduate Diploma in professional computing, aimed at graduates who have not undertaken significant studies in computing and who wish to gain a foundation in professional computing to complement their previous studies or to change career path.
At the conclusion of the course it is expected that students will be qualified to enter professional employment in the IT industry or to enter a professional position in their undergraduate discipline with additional professional computing expertise.
Meanwhile, the Graduate Diploma in Computing and IT is especially designed to enable graduates of the Bachelor of Technology or an equivalent para-professional computing or information technology bachelor's degree, to upgrade their qualifications to a professional level, with students who successfully finish eligible for admission to the Australian Computer Society at professional level.
In all courses, students are offered alternatives to traditional classroom teaching with e-learning used to deliver and support some of the available computing units.