Designing credit-bearing sustainability courses that bring genuine university-level learning to people who may never set foot on campus.
HASS wanted to extend university-quality learning on sustainability to non-traditional audiences across regional Australia, without lowering academic standards.
Designed and built two self-paced, credit-bearing short courses on OpenLearning, rich in original media and accessible interactions.
Delivered two polished, open-enrolment courses that make credit-bearing learning genuinely inclusive for the wider community.
The University of New England’s School of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences (HASS) sought to extend its reach beyond traditional student cohorts through the Zero Barriers project. The goal was to create genuinely accessible, university-level learning experiences on sustainability for people who might never set foot on a campus — including high school students, community members and lifelong learners across regional Australia. The courses needed to meet university credit-point standards while remaining engaging and approachable for a non-academic audience, many of whom would be encountering formal online learning for the first time.
In late 2025 and early 2026, UNE Partnerships collaborated closely with HASS to design and develop two one-credit-point short course modules, each comprising approximately 20 hours of self-paced learning. Delivered through the OpenLearning platform, the courses address pressing sustainability topics: global and national environmental challenges, population development and sustainable cities.
Our learning design team managed the full development lifecycle, from course architecture and content authoring through to platform configuration and completion certification. Each module was built with accessibility and engagement at the forefront — rich in original imagery, custom illustrations, multimedia and purposeful interactions designed to sustain motivation without relying on assumed digital literacy or prior academic experience.
The Zero Barriers project delivered two polished, self-contained short courses ready for open enrolment, each offering university-recognised credit and a completion certificate. The courses demonstrate that rigorous, credit-bearing learning can be made genuinely inclusive — designed not for a traditional university audience but for the broader community. For UNE, the project expanded access to university-quality education in regional Australia. For UNE Partnerships, it reinforced its capacity to translate academic expertise into engaging, accessible learning experiences across platforms, audiences and subject domains.