Silver surfer upgrades skills
Queen’s University is one of several classroom-based schools offering online courses
Jusni Hilwan was 52 when he began taking online courses from Queen’s University.
“I was working at IBM Laboratories at the time and I was a team leader. I knew the company had a policy for tuition refund,” Hilwan says.
“I decided to study psychology even though I was a programmer, so I could understand my teammates better.”
Now, 14 years later and retired, the 66-year-old is still taking online courses with the school — “more or less for fun, to exercise my brain,” he explains.
To date, the Scarborough, Ont., resident has earned close to 50 credits.
“I need 90 credits to graduate so at this rate, I’ll be 80 years of age when I graduate,” Hilwan laughs.
Hilwan is one of thousands of students from across the country — and across the world — pursuing online education with Queen’s for personal or professional development.
The Internet and ever-evolving technology has made studying at the school more accessible than ever before.
“We have to acknowledge that technology — and specifically education technology — has advanced to the point where we’re actually able to offer really good quality learning experiences online,” says Brenda Ravenscroft, associate dean of teaching and learning in the faculty of arts and science at Queen’s.
“You don’t have to go to campus and you can go at your own pace. There’s freedom.” JUSNI HILWAN RETIRED PROGRAMMER
“We have to harness all these wonderful opportunities.”
The university has been offering some form of distance education since 1988. Today, the school has more than 50 courses available online, as well as online bachelor’s degrees in English, history and psychology, and certificates in online strategy and global development strategies. Ravenscroft says online and distance options help remove barriers to education. “We’re able to reach out to people all over Canada, the continent, and in fact the globe. Accessibility is one of the most important parts of what we’re doing,” Ravenscroft says. “The personal stories are fantastic. They are stories of people whose lives have taken routes that have prevented them from being able to be on-campus students. “The ability to get that education through online studies is always a good story.” For adult learners such as Hilwan, online education provides flexibility. “You don’t have to go to campus and you can go at your own pace. There’s freedom,” Hilwan says. When Hilwan was working full-time and taking psychology courses, he spent about 10 hours a week studying, which was “very manageable,” he says. An increasing number of schools are offering online programs and courses. “(Education) is a customer-driven market,” points out Colin Simpson, dean of the centre for continuous learning at George Brown College. “In a lot of ways, we’re just responding to what our clients want. It’s important for colleges and universities to realize that student populations are changing and that society and technology is changing. We cannot assume that what was effective 20 or 30 years ago is effective today.” George Brown has the largest number of distance education students of any college in Canada. The school boasts 15 certificate programs and about 300 individual courses available through distance and online education — anything from creative writing to a robotics technician course where students can use a program that turns their personal computers into robotic simulators.
Simpson says the school’s online offerings cater to both the casual learner looking for personal enrichment and the job-focused student who wants to change careers or upgrade skills.
“People have very different lifestyles. They’ve got work commitments, family commitments, social commitments,” says Simpson. “We’re big proponents of students being able to take a course and start and finish at a time that’s convenient for them.”