Next stop: The glass onion

Distance education has always been an eager adopter of the latest-technology, in order to facilitate student-centred tertiary and professional education delivery modes. Engineering-, as well as science- and health-based courses, with their focus on experimental/experiential learning, have provided great challenges for institutions who have attempted to deliver these totally online. For the past fifteen years, with financial support from the Australian Government Office of Learning and Teaching, and Swinburne University’s Learning Transformation Unit, the suitability of online technologies for the mimicking of face-to-face laboratory experimentation has been investigated in a structured way. Following an overview of the concluded elements of this study, an overview of the next investigation will then be highlighted.