We turned a rundown newsagency on the Hobart waterfront in Tasmania into a thriving takeaway and catering business.

We worked 7 days a week, up to 14 hours per day, which enabled us to build relationships with our customers and in turn our business and our service.

We used this experience to build an academic career for Sara in teacher education. As a new academic, with business experience, at the University of Tasmania (UTAS), the then Dean of Education asked Sara to coordinate a comprehensive review of the Bachelor of Teaching course.

Soon after this experience we moved to Launceston and Sara worked with the Provost and Deputy Vice-Chancellor to coordinate benchmarking, student evaluation, course reviews and peer review of assessment for the university.

This learning experience was enough to stimulate and extend our journey working together in developing our company, Online Peer Solutions Pty Ltd, as a business to support higher education quality.

Ian’s role is focused on developing a sustainable business model by developing the Portal into a cloud-based review management system. He leaves all academic areas to Sara which also includes a support service.

We have since built a virtual team of IT experts, led by Luke McCallum, our IT Director, to meet the higher education regulatory and decision-making needs as well as develop a cloud-based review management system which is accessible, affordable and easy to use.

A strong thread has been our strong engagement with the higher education community in gaining feedback on how we can constantly improve the Portal, our support and our service. We are also committed to giving back to education by making the review management system accessible and affordable for all higher education institutions by creating a level playing field.

As you will see from the Tasmanian images on our website, we are very proud to be a Tasmanian company.
Ian and Sara Booth