ITI Articles

New Zealand Tertiary College (NZTC) celebrated a significant milestone in February with over 500 students studying via NZTC Online - NZTC’s e-learning technology.

NZTC Online is part of the College’s popular distance learning method of study, which makes NZTC’s early childhood teaching programmes accessible to students located throughout New Zealand.

Since its launch in June 2009, NZTC Online has enjoyed rapid uptake, and is now the study method of choice for over 40% of NZTC students. 

Students who opt not to study via distance learning can choose between attending day or evening lectures at NZTC’s Auckland campus in Greenlane.   

NZTC Chief Executive Selena Fox says “500 students studying online is truly a dream milestone in our efforts to support the teachers of young children, and it is an incredible achievement to have made in such a short time. The success of NZTC Online has been achieved through features that really support our early childhood teachers, such as community-enabling discussion forums, reflective task tools, an online journal, online library features and online assessment submission and return.”

NZTC Online was designed in-house at NZTC.  Although there were sophisticated e-learning packages already available, none of them had the core functionality, features or flexibility that our early childhood learners need. 

The NZTC Online e-learning technology was developed in partnership with leading education and technology experts. It has been designed as an easy-to-use online learning environment especially for students of early childhood teaching, many of whom are inexperienced computer users.

One of the key factors in the success of NZTC Online as noted by students and academic staff has been a “how to learn online” course, taken by students prior to commencing their early childhood teaching studies online.

The proprietary software behind NZTC Online – now called ecelearn – is now being commercially developed into a product that any organisation can use to manage and deliver online learning programmes.

For more information about NZTC and NZTC Online, please visit the NZTC website 

For more information about the ecelearn online learning platform, please visit ecelearn