Deakin is the first Australian university to join Inspark, whose courses are expected to be in moe than 100 universities and colleges in the US by next year.

Professor Oliver said Deakin's first-year science students would start using the Habitable Worlds course this year. She said its immersive and interactive qualities took online education to a new level.

"It's not just a series of slides. It's a whole visually-engaging environment where you feel you're in space looking for another planet," she said.

Next year Deakin also will offer another Inspark science course to first year students – BioBeyond, which asks the big question of 'are we alone in the universe?'.

Dr Ben-Naim said the multi-disciplinary approach, using big questions, was the way to attract students to STEM (science, technology, engineering and maths).

"You build the course in such a way that starts with the question 'are we alone?' but the journey that the students go through to answer the question actually teaches them all the biology they need to learn," he said.

"Putting science into silos has not served us well. Nobody wants to study biology for the sake of studying biology.

"What people are interested in is solving problems like curing cancer or curing AIDS or making spacecraft or landing on Mars."


Dr Ben-Naim's Smart Sparrow, which he launched in 2012 in Australia, develops adaptive learning platforms which respond interactively with students.

The company, which now has an office in San Francisco as well as in Sydney, was awarded $US4.5 million by the Gates Foundation to help develop the Inspark Science Network. It worked in partnership with Arizona State University, an online education leader.

Dr Ben-Naim said he was very pleased to be bringing the courses back to Australia where Smart Sparrow's technology was developed.

"It's an Australian innovation which has had significant success in America and now we are able to bring it back to Australia. For us it's very exciting," he said.

He said that the teacher's role was not diminished by using the adaptive and multi-disciplinary approach to learning in the Inspark network, where students absorbed the key concepts online outside of the classroom.

"They [students] still come to class and compare work, they work in small groups on a different problems, and the teacher has the opportunity to talk about something more advanced," Dr Ben-Naim said.

"We can make more students smarter in less time. We optimise the learning and the teacher time."