Athabasca University lets you study anywhere, at your own pace – Macleans.ca

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As their family before him, Tyler Harbaruk envisioned a lifelong career in the oil and gas industry. Growing up in the oil town of Macklin, Sask., was a way of life.

After high school, he earned a degree in petroleum engineering and quickly landed a well-paying job in his field. The position required extensive travel to western Canada and the US, taking him away from his home for weeks.

As Harbaruk’s relationship with his fiancée (now wife) grew, he wondered if his itinerant lifestyle was a good fit. “I knew that he wanted to start a family soon and that he wasn’t going to want to work away forever.”

He decided to change course and pursue a career that would keep him closer to home. But he struggled to find a post-secondary institution that would allow him to earn a degree while he worked full time.

“You think there are thousands of options, but there aren’t,” says Harbaruk, now 26. “There is one, and it is Athabasca University. He wanted to do it completely online. He could not go to face-to-face classes. I could learn after work or on my days off. It’s not like there’s a class at a specific time and you have to be there.”

As an open university, Athabasca University (AU) enables students to learn at their own pace, in their own time, regardless of location, academic history, or life circumstances. Founded in 1970, AU quickly shifted its focus to correspondence distance learning and later pioneered the use of computers to deliver courses. He launched the world’s first online MBA in 1994.

So while many universities struggled to adjust to online delivery during the pandemic, AU and its faculty are veterans. AU courses are purposely designed for asynchronous instruction, and the school is recognized as one of the world’s leading virtual universities. It serves more than 38,000 students across Canada and in more than 101 countries around the world.

To Harbaruk, the AU model he’s been perfecting for decades just made sense. He signed up for a few courses to get a bachelor’s degree in commerce. With credit for his previous diploma, she was already halfway there. And when he was laid off for four months during the COVID-19 recession, Harbaruk jumped at the chance.

“I signed up for more AU classes. I was used to working long hours, so I thought, ‘I’m just going to do these classes from eight to five and make a lot of progress toward my degree.’ ”

When work resumed, Harbaruk was back on the road, but he continued his studies in his spare time. He was doing so well that when his company offered him a job in northern Alberta in the fall of 2020, he took “a big leap” and turned it down. “I knew I wanted to take the next year off to finish my degree and find something else.”

Harbaruk graduated with a Bachelor of Commerce in Finance in June 2021, just 15 months after enrolling. “You can work at your own pace. It’s not easy, you have to be very dedicated and organized, but it’s definitely possible.”

What makes open universities different from traditional physical institutions is their focus on outputs rather than inputs, says AU President Peter Scott, who took office in January after 30 years working on learning. open and online in Australia and the UK.

“The people of the 21st century lead a very complicated life. Telling them that they can only sign up once or twice a year is limiting. Our students can enroll every month. And if you ask why they chose us, they usually say that we are flexible and of high quality.”

Peter Scott, President of Athabasca University

“Whoever you are, our job is to make you successful,” he says. “We did not choose you. You choose us, and then we help you succeed. We are not focused on measuring you when you walk in and deciding that you deserve a place here. Our job is to measure how what we do changes your world. It is that result that we are most proud of.”

Flexibility and accessibility are hallmarks of open universities, says Scott. “The people of the 21st century lead a very complicated life. Telling them that they can only sign up once or twice a year is limiting. Our students can enroll every month. And if you ask why they chose us, they usually say that we are flexible and of high quality.”

Along with the University of Calgary, the University of Lethbridge, and the University of Alberta at Edmonton, AU is one of four publicly funded comprehensive academic and research institutions in Alberta. AU’s business school ranks in the top six percent worldwide and recently earned gold standard accreditation from the Association for the Advancement of Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB)

AU is also home to the world-class IDEA Lab, a virtual research environment that harnesses the power of cloud computing to enable researchers to investigate big problems and design effective solutions. From analyzing open data sets for bias in healthcare to creating an automated answering service for questions about COVID-19, the IDEA Lab has helped AU researchers achieve faster results.

AU has made it a priority to remove the barriers many students face at traditional institutions. Scott says that about 70 percent of the students are “first in the family” students, the first in their families to attend college. “When your family doesn’t have a tradition of sending people to college, it represents a new opportunity. You are taking that leap on behalf of yourself, your children, your cousins ​​and the rest of your family. You are showing them that college can be a part of their lives.”

Scott also points out that at least one in 10 AU students lives in a rural or remote area. That’s one of the benefits of asynchronous instruction: students can participate from anywhere, at their convenience. “It’s really a perfect model for working around the world,” he adds. “Everything a conventional university does, we can do better, and for everyone.”

For Harbaruk, the most significant benefit of the open AU model was how it helped develop her self-management skills, which are essential in her new career.

Away from the itinerant lifestyle of her previous job, Harbaruk is now a business valuation analyst at MNP, living in Sherwood Park, Alta.

“At AU, you’re given a deadline and you decide how to plan your time and progress through your courses,” he says. “You set the timeline yourself, you just have to meet the deadline with good quality work. That is what really matters in the workplace as well.”

For more information about Athabasca University and its study programs, please visit athabascau.ca.


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