About the University of Melbourne

The University of Melbourne is a leading international university with a tradition of excellence in teaching and research. With outstanding performance in international rankings, Melbourne is at the forefront of higher education in the Asia-Pacific region and the world. The University of Melbourne is consistently ranked among the world’s top universities.

Established in 1853, shortly after the founding of Melbourne, the University is located just a few minutes from the centre of this global city. The main Parkville campus is recognised as the hub of Australia’s premier knowledge precinct comprising eight hospitals, many leading research institutes and a wide range of knowledge-based industries.

The University community is made up of:

• More than 50,000 students (approximately 42,500 full-time equivalents)
• Over 14,500 staff
• Over 338,000 alumni internationally

Further information about UoM is available online at www.unimelb.edu.au

Social and sustainable procurement

The University is committed to understanding the impacts of our organisation on society and the environment, and doing something about them, by enhancing positive impacts and minimising negative ones.This commitment extends to the procurement of goods and services. The University has a strong desire to engage with Service Providers whom employ Indigenous Australians (including Torres Strait Islanders), as well as disadvantaged community members.

We seek to work with Service Providers whose values align with our own and who share our commitment to sustainability and social procurement best practice and improvement.

About this Opportunity

Overview

The University has set a clear objective to grow and diversify its teaching margins to enable long-term investment in its academic mission. Through Advancing Students and Education, the University has outlined a vision to be an education leader, affording a more diverse cohort of students with greater flexibility, accessibility, and education quality.

A targeted online portfolio – temporarily called ‘Melbourne Online’ (MO) - focused on online post-graduate courses presents a compelling opportunity for the University to capitalise on the continued growth in online education to enhance its financial position, reach a more diverse cohort of students, and continue to strengthen its reputation as an education leader.

Melbourne Online will invest in building its own capability in learning design, however as the business scales we will need access to an external panel of Learning Environment Developers (learning design, multi-media production) for additional capacity to meet product launches as required.

Background

Melbourne University is establishing a new business and capability in online education focusing on the post-graduate market for working professionals. To meet its growth targets, the business will need to support an ambitious product roadmap over the next three years, including designing and building online courses at scale. The model will leverage MO’s expertise in online learning experiences and the academic expertise of faculties and will need to supplement in-house learning design capability at times to support product launches. The University’s primary objective is to create additional learning design and multi-media production capacity to support speed to market as required.

The portfolio will be post-graduate programs, given immediate opportunities and availability of capability to capitalise on this market. Rollout of the portfolio will be carefully sequenced—based on projected demand, development effort and market readiness—and staged over a 5-7-year period. This approach has several benefits such as managing the development effort placed on faculties, reducing risk by testing market demand before expanding rollout, and allowing the University to streamline its program development process. As most product launches are expected to be phased over the coming three years, we do not want to build a large ongoing team as once initial course builds are completed, the role of the team will switch from build and design to maintenance and refresh which are less resource intensive.

The University is looking to establish a panel of providers aligned to specific capabilities and will be released a Request for Proposal (RFP) based on the outcome of this Request for Information (RFI).