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Colleges of Applied Arts and Technology: Now Offering AQs

By Melissa Campeau
Photos: iStockphoto.com

Robotics, civil engineering, gerontology, agribusiness: AQs in these and other popular technical areas help teachers spark students’ curiosity — and might just influence career choices down the road.

For teachers with technological education qualifications, AQs in these subjects can help gain greater depth of knowledge in their area of interest and expertise.

Technological education (64 options in total, under Schedule F in the AQ courses listing) generally requires specialized equipment and learning spaces, as well as qualified technological education teachers. Until quite recently, there were so few appropriately equipped Ontario institutions offering Schedule F AQs, they were essentially unavailable to most teachers in Ontario.

All that is beginning to change, however. As of 2017, Seneca College, Collège Boréal and Loyalist College will become the first three colleges of applied arts and technology approved to offer AQs.

Each institution has state-of-the-art facilities and specialist instructors, which means they’ll have the capacity to offer enhanced learning for teachers, opening up more career pathways for students to explore. Collège Boréal, on board as a provider of technological education AQ courses, helps ensure these Schedule F courses are available to the French-language community, supporting equal access to knowledge and skills by both French-speaking educators and students.

In years past, teachers with an interest in learning more about teaching in the fields of technological education — such as photography, horticulture, computer repair, child development, cooking, computer-aided manufacturing, architectural design, and beyond — have had to seek out courses on their own, without ever receiving additional accreditation for completing them. With AQ courses available in these technological areas, teachers will have access to state-of-the-art instruction from expert instructors, and earn Additional Qualifications, helping the public to know they are additionally qualified in those areas.