The possibility of a further university presence starting in Goulburn moved a step closer this week with a delegation from the University of Central Queensland (UCQ) visiting the city.
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The service is to be based in a building at Goulburn TAFE campus, with a work space already being fitted out in line for an early 2018 start, pending incorporation and further funding.
Professor Bill Blayney from UCQ said the university has already been a supporter of a similar centre in Cooma and were running similar courses there. As such, they were keen to progress the project further here.
He said they were confident they could begin in next year and they would be employing tutors and teachers to work in Goulburn.
“We are hoping to start here next year. The courses on offer would be university courses, primarily in education such as early childhood, primary, masters courses as well as other undergraduate bachelor programs,” Professor Blayney said.
“It could be a similar model to the one that works at Cooma - we scan the tutors to ensure they have the right qualifications and we employ them and they run face to face workshops and tutorials here.
“Students can also do workshops online or have a zoom session with their lecturer. It is a blended distance model - we call it ‘distance with assistance.’
“We have found that studying by distance does not work for everyone.
“Students need to build relationships and find someone they can feel safe and be supported with through their courses - that’s what this centre will be about,” Prof Blayney said.
He said the plans were progressing well and that research had show that such centres in rural Australia were stopping the ‘brain drain’ to the cities.
“We are researching the impact of running these centres in regional areas and our studies are already showing that people are more likely to stay in the town if they study there,” he said.
“As well, distance education models like these can assist in halting the drain of youth to the cities.
“We have been delivering courses in multiple sites throughout regional Queensland we have kept people in those areas as a result.”
The Chair of the Goulburn University Centre Steering Committee Guy Milson said the country university centre project was progressing extremely well.
“We have gone from a steering committee to a board of directors and we are awaiting incorporation,” Mr Milson said.
“Once that happens, we will then be advertising for a full-time manager for the centre and that will also be linked to a funding proposal with the state government. We are still negotiating with TAFE over the site but once we have all of these things in place we will be going out into the community and creating more momentum about the project,
“The community is behind us - we have great will from Goulburn Mulwaree Council and both the state and federal governments as well as the corporates.
“The state government has allocated $13 million towards the setup of a number of these centres across NSW including Cooma, Goulburn, Broken Hill, Leeton, and Griffith.