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Electronics Technician Distance Education Program |
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The Electronics Technician (ET) distance education program was developed in 1997 by Dr. Colin Simpson, an electronics professor at George Brown College in Toronto, Canada. Since then, the award-winning program has grown to become the largest of its kind in the world. With over 10,000 students studying electronics at a distance, the ET distance education program has effectively broken down the barriers that prevent students from accessing technical course material on-line. Of note is that the program has broken the gender barrier in the study of electronics. Typically, less than 2% of students who study electronics in Colleges and Universities are female. In ET distance education program almost 20% of the student’s are female, which has been attributed to the accessibility of the learning material and the non-threatening environment in which it is delivered. The ET distance education program is delivered in an asynchronous format and allows the student to determine the time required to complete the program. Due to the empirical nature of electronics curriculum, and the high level of integration of lab simulation software, students are able to successfully complete the course material with a minimum amount of interaction with faculty and staff at the College. A state-of-the-art on-line student support centre for the program was funded by a $1 million grant from the Government of Ontario. As a result of this highly interactive learning centre, the program enjoys one of the lowest attrition rates of any distance education program.
The ET distance education program covers an introductory curriculum in electronics equivalent to a two year college associate degree. Contents of the program includes Current, Voltage, Resistance, Ohm's Law, Parallel and Series Circuits, Magnetism, AC/DC Circuits Capacitance, Inductance, Transformers, Resonance, Filters, control relays, relay logic, Transistors, Semiconductors, Amplifiers, Op Amps and Digital electronics. The interactive multimedia program presents twenty-three modules of interactive curriculum using text, video, 2D and 3D animations, photos, audio clips and interactive electronic circuit simulation using CircuitLogix.
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