As part of Swinburne Astronomy Online (SAO), we run an online short course entitled Searching for Extrasolar Planets and Extraterrestrial Life. The main aim of the short course is to act as a “feeder” into our graduate programs and allow students to trial online education while exploring one of the new hot topics of astronomy – astrobiology.

I will present a brief overview of how SAO works, followed by an outline of our short course which has been running for four semesters. In particular, I will focus on why astrobiology is a good choice of topics for an online short course, and look at the successes (and failures) of the course in attracting students to both online education and astronomy –and astrobiology in particular.