Current Ventures

Please feel free to browse this page for information on our current start-up ventures. For start-ups and reports that have been completed and are now in the monitoring phase of the iTEV initiative please see Past Ventures

The iTEV Unit is currently working on five separate ventures with the following areas of The University:

• Faculty of Engineering
• Sydney Conservatorium of Music
• The Faculty of Dentistry
• The Faculty of Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources & The Centre For Continuing Education, and
• The University of Sydney: iStudy@Sydney

Continuing Professional education is critical to all engineering fields of practice. The Faculty has embarked on a review of programs and delivery methods to ensure itmeets the needs of individual professional practicing engineers and reflects the future demands of industry and government.

As the preeminent School of Music in Australia and the East Asian Pacific region The Sydney Conservatorium of Music attracts a broad range of interest and wants to expand its reach to meet the needs of adults interested in music theory and performance but unable to attend the open academy programs.

Under the direction of its Dean and with the advantage of exceptional state-of-the art facilities The Conservatorium is proposing to establish the Electronic Music Institute, to be known as iCON to serve this wider audience.

Dentistry at Sydney operates across three campuses: the Dental Hospital at Surry Hills, the College of Health Sciences at Camperdown and the Westmead Dental Hospital. Dental education is characterised by intensive clinical work, evidence-based approach to practice, the need for highly developed technical and communication skills, clinical reasoning and inter-professional team approaches. The problem-based, student-centred program of the Faculty demands a low staff student ratio and the clinical apprenticeship model requires access to a limited number of student clinical chairs in the hospitals. These constraints are shared with all leading schools of dentistry.

The Faculty offers a graduate entry Bachelor of Dentistry, a Bachelor of Oral Health, and the Master of Dental Science in a range of specialties including some with nested certificate and diploma courses. Research opportunities are provided through the Master of Science in Dentistry and the Doctor of Philosophy degree. The Faculty shares general medical courses on health and disease with the Faculty of Medicine and contributes dental courses to a range of programs in the College of Health Sciences.

The Continuing Education in Dentistry program offers over twenty courses and workshops a year catering to the lifelong learning needs of practitioners. Continuing education is likely to become compulsory for all registered dentists in Australia within the next few years with Victoria mandating CE points from 2005.

The Faculty of Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources (FAFNR) and the Centre for Continuing Education (CCE) are challenged to diversify their sources of revenue and to increase income. The aim of this venture is to explore a partnership between FAFNR and the CCE in order to deliver short and continuing professional education courses.

FAFNR with its traditional research strengths, has innovative postgraduate and short-course teaching opportunities but is currently unable to manage the administrative and logistics of delivering such courses. The CCE, on the other-hand has exceptional infrastructure and expertise in delivering short-courses and has been asked to increase its interface and involvement with the mainstream University.

iTEV proposes as the next phase in its development, the establishment of a single point of reference for the University’s international focus in delivery of programs, within a commercially viable environment. Building on current expertise within ITEV and working with existing University services and the Learning and Teaching Portfolio ITEV will build a portal with an internal focus on shared services for staff and an external market focus. The site would list all distance education and flexibly delivered programs that could be undertaken by students residing off shore or anywhere in Australia (Credit and Non Credit).

The University of Sydney: World Academy would begin in a low key way, essentially, a web sited one-stop shop that would identify and refer potential students, staff and community to programs, services and resources that would serve to consolidate Sydney’s existing offerings and provide a coordination function for internal purposes.

At this stage of the venture iTEV is working in conjunction with Marianne Cini of Evolve Studios to a model website.