DEAKIN UNIVERSITY
It ’ s time to forget the ‘ ivy covered professors in ivy covered halls ’ that some of us may still associate with a university education . ‘ Live the future ’ is the strapline for Deakin University ’ s Agenda 2020 , a programme that promises to ‘ bring the opportunities of the digital age into the real world of Learning , Ideas , Value and Experience by the end of this decade .’ As we have seen often enough in these pages , digital transformation is a common goal in the worlds of business , finance , telecommunications and the like , but tertiary education has been held back especially in the west , by the traditional picture of what a university education ought to be like . It has taken an Australian institution to radically re-imagine the learning landscape from the perspective of its ‘ customers ’, the students and teachers .
Deakin had a head start on Australia ’ s 42 other universities , including the seven that are located in its home state of Victoria , thanks to its distinguished track record in distance learning . Established
in 1974 , Deakin was Victoria ’ s fourth university and the first in regional Victoria . It has four physical campuses , at Melbourne , two at Geelong and another further to the west at Warrnambool , as well as a number of learning centres . Currently a quarter of its 53,000 enrolled students belong to what it calls its Cloud Campus , and may
146 June 2016