{"id":20323,"date":"2020-12-01T09:00:56","date_gmt":"2020-12-01T17:00:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/?p=20323"},"modified":"2020-12-02T09:04:14","modified_gmt":"2020-12-02T17:04:14","slug":"camosun-running-new-discovery-technology-dual-credit-program","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/2020\/12\/01\/camosun-running-new-discovery-technology-dual-credit-program\/","title":{"rendered":"Camosun running new Discovery Technology dual-credit program"},"content":{"rendered":"

Camosun College started a five-month dual-credit program for high school students this September. The Discovery Technology program, funded by the Ministry of Advanced Education, Skills and Training, will help high-school students earn college credits and high-school credits at the same time. The students in the program will get scholarships through their school district to complete the program.<\/p>\n

Discovery Technology aims to help improve high-school students\u2019 skills by allowing them to take engineering courses at a post-secondary level. The program will be available to students from the Victoria, Saanich, Sooke, Gulf Islands, and Cowichan Valley school districts.<\/p>\n

Camosun south island partnership director Nicola Priestly says that the program started with the intention to expose students to a wide range of industries within the technology sector.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe thought with the end in mind of, \u2018How do we expose students to the world of technology and allow them to smoothly transition from high school to post-secondary?\u201d\u2019 says Priestly.<\/p>\n

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Camosun is offering a new dual-credit program for high-school students (photo provided).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The original plan for the program\u2014which includes two post-secondary courses and three high-school courses\u2014included work-experience placements for around 100 hours.<\/p>\n

\u201cCOVID has put a little wrinkle in that plan,\u201d says Priestly. \u201cEven though students aren\u2019t going out on work-experience placements in the way we\u2019d hoped, we\u2019re really trying to give them as much industry connection as possible. We started with a lot of resume-building and reaching out to companies for Zoom informational interviews to make connection, maybe going on a job shadow if the company\u2019s comfortable with that, we\u2019ve got our groups going out on tours and being able to, ideally, connect with as many companies as possible, so by the end of the program they\u2019ve not only experienced all of the different areas, maybe focusing on a specific area that they are really keen on, and then made some great industry connections within that area.\u201d<\/p>\n

COVID restrictions have also changed the teaching experience this semester.<\/p>\n

\u201cStudents can go on campus every Thursday and be with our high-school teacher. We\u2019ve seconded Jeff Horncastle to really be kind of the conduit for the students. Jeff is not only teaching the high-school courses, but he\u2019s helping bridge the gap between the post-secondary courses as well.\u201d<\/p>\n

While technology-based courses often have more men in them, Priestly says that\u2019s changing a bit and she\u2019s seeing it in the Discovery program.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have a really great mix of gender,\u201d she says. \u201cWe\u2019ve got about five ladies that are in the program, which is always nice to see, because sometimes it\u2019s a little bit more male, so, awesome to see women in our program.\u201d<\/p>\n

Priestly says the college has already heard some positive feedback from the students in the program.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s lots of students that really enjoy being on a computer, and they like coding, and they like electronics,\u201d she says. \u201cSo we were really lucky for the first version of this program that we got lots of kids that were really keen.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, Camosun also allows the students to explore other programs.<\/p>\n

\u201cStudents are taking a few extra lessons from one of our Civil Engineering teachers,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s not part of a course, but it\u2019s a couple Fridays where a Civil Engineering instructor works with the students to expose them to careers within Civil Engineering.\u201d<\/p>\n

And due to the success of the program and the positive feedback the college has received, there\u2019s more where the Discovery program came from.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe goal is that each district takes the Discover Technology program\u2014like they took the TASK [Trades Awareness Skills & Knowledge] program\u2014and runs their own versions of the program,\u201d says Priestly. \u201cSo now that we\u2019ve offered a regional Discover Technology program, the goal now is for each district is to take that Discover Tech program and make it their own and offer it in-district.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Camosun College started a five-month dual-credit program for high school students this September. The Discovery Technology program, funded by the Ministry of Advanced Education, Skills and Training, will help high-school students earn college credits and high-school credits at the same time. The students in the program will get scholarships through their school district to complete […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":20324,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20323","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-webexclusive","category-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20323","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20323"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20323\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20325,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20323\/revisions\/20325"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20324"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20323"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20323"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20323"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}