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Quick Facts
Cost: $11.2 million
Size: All Algonquin College Campuses
Anticipated new student spaces: At least 900
Projected completion: Fall 2014

The Need

As a part of Algonquin College’s vision of what type of institution it will be in the year 2020, it has made a commitment to become a “Digital College” over the next three years and provide additional online learning options and student services. The College will expand dramatically its online offerings so that significantly more College programs, particularly those in high-demand will be available and supported online. This investment will create capacity at all campuses to increase space for applied learning facilities and support booming enrolment demands.

Increasing student success through flexible delivery

Algonquin’s student surveys indicate that most students work part time, on average for 15 hours per week. They must work in order to have the financial resources required to stay in school. Often, work schedules and class schedules conflict and, when students miss too many classes, they fail or withdraw. Some don’t register in the first place because current programming does not offer the flexibility they require.

The Digital College will help these students as they can attend scheduled applied learning face-to-face classes when possible and attend the “Digital college” classes when they cannot go to the bricks and mortar campus.

The Digital College will also expand training options for part-time, distance education, and individuals who currently cannot participate in college programming. At this time, part-time students are limited, for the most part, to taking a narrow range of programs or courses offered through distance education and in the evenings. Opportunities are also limited for individuals who are working full time or unable to attend full time studies to work towards a broader range of programs and certifications. Options for these students will significantly expand as a result of this initiative, and over time students will be provided with options to participate in full-time studies to accelerate their program completion.

Building on a history of success:

Algonquin College has been delivering online courses to full-time students since 2000. Last semester, 168 fully online courses were delivered to nearly 5,000 full-time students; and there were over 850 hybrid courses delivered to the same group with nearly 30,000 unique course registrations. Today, the College has over 250 online and hybrid courses in development With this leadership, Algonquin College has become the largest contributor of online courses to Ontario Learn, a consortium of 22 Ontario Community Colleges dedicated to developing and delivering online courses.

The Response

This increased investment will provide more choices for online learning and student services to prospective, current, and graduate students, all with the goal of becoming a true partner with hiring employers, and engaging in a lifelong learning support for individuals.

• Improve student access, retention, success and graduation;
  
• Embrace the learn anywhere / anytime / anyway learning style demanded by the digital age student;
  
• Respond to student demand and expectations for program and service flexibility and choice;
  
• Proactively engage and service the diverse student learning needs;
  
• Provide a wider choices of academic programs, college services, and lifelong learning and training options;
  
• Provide hiring employers with College graduates that are more mobile, more able to adapt to changes, and, as a result of Algonquin’s Digital College initiative, are well grounded in 21st century skill sets such as critical thinking, problem solving, teamwork, collaboration, diversity, information technology, creativity, innovation, lifelong learning, and self direction, among others;
  
• Offer environmentally-friendly program and service delivery;
  
• Transform staff training and professional development;
  
• Consolidate and streamline online college services and operations;
  
• Provide further options to international students looking to study in Ontario, Canada;
  
• Provide a multitude of opportunities for applied research ranging from developing tools for content creation and delivery to determining the impacts of the Digital College on faculty engagement and student learning and success.

Greater opportunity for partnerships:

With its impressive array of communication tools, the Digital College will provide increased opportunities for Algonquin to partner with other institutions of higher learning in the delivery of collaborative programs. The educational experience will be enriched through interaction with expert faculty in different sites working together to provide learners with new, high quality courses and programs. It will allow Algonquin to “host” events sponsored by other training organizations, and extend the reach of our partners into the Eastern Ontario region as a first priority, followed by other Canadian regions. New articulation opportunities will also open up with learners completing bridging and laddering programs via the Digital College and through partnerships with other institutions equipped with video conferencing equipment.

Algonquin will, through our mobile learning initiative, partner with industry leading hardware and software companies such as IBM, Microsoft, Adobe, and Corel to ensure our students have access to the full suite of software and productivity tools to learn, and thrive in today’s digital world. 

This project will allow Algonquin College to be an incubator for new ideas, pedagogy, and digital education best practices that will be shared across Ontario’s education system.

Required Infrastructure

The project will require the construction and equipping of audio and video studios and video conference facilities. It will also require renovations to general purpose classrooms as they are converted to labs, simulation facilities, and other hands-on learning environments. This will require investment in software, hardware and programming as well.

The Algonquin College Digital College initiative supports all of Algonquin’s program areas and underpins planned capital infrastructure expansion and enrolment expansion for the entire college.

Contact

Glenn MacDougall
Director, Learning and Teaching Services, Algonquin College
613-727-4723 Ext. 5569
Glenn.MacDougall@algonquincollege.com