News

SEO enhancements released   11 Apr 2013
Page rank We are very pleased to announce that we have released a set of improvements for our onCourse website. Our most crucial goal was to improve SEO (google ranking), particularly after an update of the Google search indexer engine called "Panda". You can read more here. In a nutshell, Google has started applying much more onerous penalties on your website for duplicate content.
onCourse web enrolment enhancements released   09 Apr 2013
We continue to work hard at keeping onCourse as the best enrolment experience of any system, anywhere in the world. We have recently revamped the look of the enrolment process to make it clearer to students that they are in a secure checkout and to show them progress as they go through the (three) screens.
Are you ready for the USI and AVETMISS 7?   15 Mar 2013
This week, NCVER has released an update regarding the AVETMISS 7.0 standard for providers. This will be the new mandatory reporting format that will be used across Australia from January 1st 2014.

At the same time, the USI (Unique Student Identifier) system is undergoing legislative approval through Parliament to be endorsed for implementation in January 1st 2014.
Responsive design   08 Mar 2013
Today we have an essay and a marketing opportunity.
onCourse final release   28 Feb 2013
onCourse 4.0 has arrived. This is the culmination of about 5 person-years of development effort since version 3.0. Our feature list is long so I will not reproduce it here.

http://www.ish.com.au/oncourse/download/releasenotes/release-notes-400
Search enhancements   12 Feb 2013
We recently implemented some updates to the search capabilities of all onCourse websites. I'll use some customer sites as an example to outline the sorts of changes which have been implemented.

https://www.cityeastcc.com.au/courses/arts
Web enrolment enhancements   07 Feb 2013
We have today released a new version of the enrolment process into all staging websites. This is the culmination of several months design, implementation and testing; and it represents the fourth iteration of the enrolment process that we've implemented. Each time we try to add more flexibility but still keep the enrolment process as simple as possible for the student. We know that with every step the student is asked to complete some may decide to abandon their enrolment.
Searching onCourse documentation   18 Dec 2012
We've implemented a new search feature to make it easier for you to find onCourse answers both from this forum and from the manual:

http://www.ish.com.au/oncourse/support
Newtown power outage   13 Dec 2012
From 8.30am this morning, Newtown has had no power. Unfortunately that means our office phones, email and squish task tracking system are down. All customer websites are hosted in a data centre with redundant power, so this will not affect onCourse website availability or your customers ability to undertake online transactions. All our notification systems are still functioning, so we will also be advised if there is any issue which affects your website. This morning if you need to contact us, you can find us here on the forum... at least until our laptop batteries go flat!
Infinite scrolling   05 Dec 2012
We have just enabled a new feature on all our websites which allows for infinite scrolling of the course lists. Gone is the "show more courses" button. Instead, just keep scrolling and more courses will be loaded automatically. For example:

http://www.cityeastcc.com.au/courses/
onCourse 4.0 (first release candidate)   27 Nov 2012
Wow that time has gone quickly. We are almost ready with another onCourse release and this time we've gone all the way to 4.0 since we added so many new goodies.

For all the inside information as to what has changed, please read this:

http://www.ish.com.au/oncourse/download/releasenotes/release-notes-400

And download the first release candidate here:
onCourse 4.0 (release candidates)   27 Nov 2012
Wow that time has gone quickly. We are almost ready with another onCourse release and this time we've gone all the way to 4.0 since we added so many new goodies.

For all the inside information as to what has changed, please read this:

http://www.ish.com.au/oncourse/download/releasenotes/release-notes-400

And download the first release candidate here:
ACE AVETMISS reporting with OLIV   16 Nov 2012
There is no better way to start a Friday than with some industry acronym jargon, and this post goes out to all my Community College buddies who will (unfortunately!) know exactly what I mean when I mention our annual compliance reporting via the NSW Board of Adult and Community Education (ACE) AVETMISS Online Validation and Lodgement (OLiV) service.
Search: redux   28 Sep 2012
Search is one of those parts of onCourse that is never finished. Way back 10 years ago, search was not much more sophisticated than finding a keyword in a text field or two. These days users are spoilt by the power of engines like Google and their thousands of engineers who tweak the results daily. In onCourse Web we currently have these options:

* Plain keyword searching which looks through tutor names, course names, site names and course descriptions
onCourse on the road: ACPET 2012   11 Sep 2012
Seeing most of our blog readers work in adult education, I bet you could answer this question: what is secret to conference success and excellent participant feedback?

On 30 and 31 August 2012, Ari and I travelled to the annual Australian Council for Private Education and Training National Conference held at the delightful Westin Sydney to discover the answer to this very question. While we were there, we are figured we should set up a stall to educate our fellow conference attendees about the joy an onCourse installation could bring to their lives.