Teaching Astrobiology online

As part of Swinburne Astronomy Online http://astronomy.swin.edu.au/sao/ (SAO), we run an online short course entitled Searching for Extrasolar Planets and Extraterrestrial Life. The main aim of the short course is to act as a ``feeder'' into our graduate programs and allow students to trial online education while exploring one of the new hot topics of astronomy -- astrobiology. I will present a brief overview of how SAO works, followed by an outline of our short course which has been running for four semesters. In particular, I will focus on why astrobiology is a good choice of topics for an online short course, and look at the successes (and failures) of the course in attracting students to both online education and astronomy -- and astrobiology in particular.