With the cooperation of the Re-Open Saskatchewan Post-Secondary Sector strategy, Great Plains College has obtained approval to reopen some programs that would be beneficial to the economic recovery of the province as it digs itself out of the COVID-19 hole.

The strategy during the two-month summer timeline includes skills and safety training to support critical areas of the labour market, student services, and exam monitoring for students that are enrolled in external educational institutions.

David Keast is the president and CEO of Great Plains College.

"We're starting with our programs and courses that are very much labour market-linked and linked to our industry partners. So for example, this summer we'll be doing a lot of skills and safety training which is basically a line of programming that is contracted with the local industries; oil and gas and other industries. And we'll also be offering a couple of other things, like one intake of the heavy equipment operator training program, which teaches certifies people for operating heavy equipment. And we're also doing some work in the power engineering three area."

As the province moves to reopen its economy and recover, much of its economic plan relies heavily on the resource industry, the agriculture sector and infrastructure stimulus, as noted in the latest provincial budget. Saskatchewan is an export-based economy, yet many of those trades that the economy relies on cannot be learned in an online environment. 1A trucking, Heavy Equipment Operation, Welding, and other staples of the Saskatchewan Economy are just a few examples.

We are a hands-on economy that suddenly found itself in an online training world.

It was a situation that both the government and Great Plains College recognized, leading to last week's decision to reopen and move towards a blended model.

"What is now an almost exclusively online environment, (will be moving) to a blended model for a selected number of programs in the summer. And what I mean by 'blended' is that it'll be partly online, but there will be a significant amount of face-to-face practical hands-on training because the programs themselves are very much geared towards hand-on training."

While no one yet knows exactly what post-secondary education will look like in the fall, Keast expects it won't be too different from their summer plan, with a significant online portion combined with some face-to-face depending on each individual program.

"The plan for fall programming is not yet completed at the college, and it's not yet confirmed in the post-secondary sector itself. The Ministry of Advanced Education is working very carefully through that process, but we expect that the fall programming will look an awful lot like the summer programming. looks and that is that it will be a blended model of delivery."

While there is a significant amount of industry training that requires hand-on time, there are also, in Keast's opinion, a number of them that don't. One of the lessons, he says, of the COVID-19 pandemic is that there are a number of areas where the college could be more flexible in its delivery options, adding that it was something that they would be exploring.

"One of the lessons is (that) we could, without a whole lot of trouble, probably adapt and make our programming more flexible using technology. And we will be working towards that, in particular for the fall program plan. I would have to say that the second lesson is (that) online learning is not going to be a be-all and end-all solution to everything. You still have a lot of people who want an on-college, on-campus, face-to-face learning experience."

Finalized details of the summer programming plan is not yet released but will be announced on the Great Plains College website when available.

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Great Plains College Opening Limited Hand-on Training This Summer - SwiftCurrentOnline.com