The 'Study with Australia' pilot campaign, a collaboration between the Australian Trade and Investment Commission (Austrade) and leading social learning platform Futurelearn.com, has achieved over 836,000 enrolments from more than 460,000 learners across a collection of 52 free online courses from 20 major Australian higher education and English language training providers.
Rebecca Hall, Global Education Lead at Austrade, said: "This initiative is a great example of how our world-renowned higher education sector has adapted during extraordinary circumstances to provide high-quality educational resources to students around the world.
"That's almost half a million students who have received access to world-class learning experiences with Australian education providers during what has been, and continues to be, a very challenging time. It's wonderful to be able to give back in this way.
"Australia has a long history of innovation in education. COVID-19 has pushed our universities and education institutions to embrace digital technologies at a rapid pace, and they have risen to this challenge and proven they are well-equipped to cater for an expansion in online learning.
"The success of the pilot has been achieved through a strategic partnership with FutureLearn, and highlighted the huge potential for growth in the Australian online education space," she said.
Justin Cooke, Chief Content and Partnerships Officer at FutureLearn said: "We are delighted to see that the Study with Australia campaign has taken off globally, enabling hundreds of thousands of learners to experience the best of Australian higher education completely free of charge.
"Our data has revealed many of the learners on the campaign have shown a lot of interest in building valuable industry-facing and career-related skills such as data analysis and business management.
"We're proud to work with Austrade and our fantastic network of Australian education providers to support professionals and students around the world, and we look forward to continuing on our mission to transform access to education through this partnership," he said.
The five most popular courses were: Improve your IELTS Speaking score from Macquarie University; Data Analytics for Decision Making: An Introduction to Using Excel from Bond University; Introduction to Psychology: The Psychology of Learning from Monash University; Big Data Analytics: Opportunities, Challenges and the Future from Griffith University; and Professional Resilience: Building Skills to Thrive at Work from Deakin University.
