This year’s HSC students will be the first to take advantage of the Board of Studies’ new study website, NSW Students Online.

John Della Bosca, who launched the site last month as education minister, said the board and the education department had met “generation Y halfway” by giving students access to information in their preferred medium.

Students access the site by using their student number and PIN and can personalise their homepage with a variety of “pods” – or boxes – to display the courses they are studying, past exam papers filtered by subject and year, links to favourite sites, a personalised exam timetable, notes from HSC markers and other resources.

The board’s general manager, John Bennett, said the site was the first of its kind in Australia, designed specifically for a generation that had grown up with the internet.

“The board’s web developers have taken advantage of the latest web technologies to maximise the usability of Students Online while ensuring the site is responsive and speedy,” Dr Bennett said.

Willoughby Girls High School captain Lauren Fong, who demonstrated the site’s features at the launch, said the site gave her “a sense of organisation”.

The board is providing a $50 book voucher to the 1,000th student to log in for the first time and to students selected randomly until the end of November.

For more information go to www.studentsonline.bos.nsw.edu.au