Building a bridging program to prepare international postgraduate students for Australian academic standards, delivered as an immersive, AI-enhanced hybrid course.
International students often arrive with an overseas Bachelor degree but lack the academic and English language skills expected at Australian postgraduate level.
Co-designed and built a full trimester of interactive, AI-supported learning content in close collaboration with UNE stakeholders.
Delivered on scope and budget, and recognised internationally — including an invitation to present at the global H5P Ambassador Forum.
International postgraduate students who wish to enrol in Masters programs at the University of New England often hold an overseas Bachelor degree but without the specific academic skills or English language expected at Australian postgraduate level. UNE proposed a bridging program — the Postgraduate International Qualifying Program (IQP) — to close these gaps through a full-time, trimester-long hybrid model combining online and face-to-face study. The program required six discrete Action Learning Sets, each comprising four learning modules and three online assessment tasks, designed to meet the diverse needs of students, teaching staff and support teams.
UNE Partnerships led a collaborative co-design process with UNE stakeholders, conceptualising end-user needs across students, teaching staff, academic records staff and the student support team. Using an agile methodology, our learning design team worked in close, iterative collaboration with UNE subject matter experts through structured feedback cycles and a shared continuous improvement approach.
We authored and published 24 learning modules and 18 summative assessment tasks using the native tools in UNE’s Moodle environment and the Adobe Suite, creating interactives, illustrations, graphics, animations and videos to support immersive learning. Storyboards, facilitator guides and PowerPoint presentations were authored and published using desktop software.
To extend the program’s reach and sustainability, we researched, tested, customised and published an online data capture tool for student personal learning assessments. We also tested and implemented licensed generative AI software to produce student-facing avatar videos that brought diverse voices and cultures to content delivery. Accompanied by transcripts and designed for just-in-time editing with low resource requirements, these videos gave UNE a sustainable model for leveraging AI to enhance student engagement. All products and user guides were handed over with full access for UNE to iteratively improve through delivery cycles.
The project delivered all outputs to scope and on budget. The digital learning solutions attracted recognition beyond the university: UNE invited the UNE Partnerships team to present to the global H5P Ambassador Forum, where the team showcased its H5P designs and took part in a question-and-answer session with academics from universities across Europe, the Americas and Asia. In response to the high quality of the course’s interactive elements, UNE Partnerships was also invited to submit published content for a global H5P design award.
Dr Kashmira Dave, Senior Lecturer, Academic Development, Digital Education – University of New England