Tuesday, June 08, 2010

PLA in the news

Reporter Jason Miller from the local daily newspaper Belleville Intelligencer visited our PLA conference last week and his story was published on Saturday.

FNTI LEADING WAY IN EDUCATING MATURE STUDENTS
Jason Miller, The Intelligencer

A local college has conjured a revolutionary way to educate mature students that has been catching on with post-secondary institutions around the world.

The Tyendinaga Mohawk Territory-based First Nations Technical Institute just concluded its prior learning assessment conference, which attracted educators from Chile, South Africa and Nunavut, who have adopted the program.

Paul Zakos, the manager of the PLA program at FNTI, said the education model is geared towards helping professionals without post-secondary education accreditation build portfolios that represent their body of work.

"It forces institutions to change the way they deliver services," he said. "The demographics are changing."

Zakos said the four-day conference at the Ramada also highlighted efforts to recognize Indigenous knowledge in Canada and around the world.

He said the PLA program identifies and validates knowledge acquired from non-academic work and life experience, which might have been gained from volunteerism, travel, and hobbies.

"The PLA process is designed to make it more efficient and lessen the time," he said. "You still have to prove have that skill and knowledge."

During the conference, speakers staged workshops that underscored the commonalities among Indigenous people around the world in acknowledging unique worldviews and learning styles that enhance Indigenous peoples full participation in their societies.

This is the 21st conference that has been staged by FNTI, marking its 25 years as an Aboriginally controlled post-secondary institution. The college offers 13 programs and has an enrolment of about 300 students.

Zakos said the school uses a different education model, where educators visit the students in their communities several times a year.

Some of the students have jobs and families to care for, he said, so they are unable to fit into the traditional school system.

He said a vast majority of those students already have workplace experience and the PLA program is a medium through which they can construct a portfolio and receive some form of accreditation for their years of work.

"People learn a lot of things outside of school that are relevant to what you would be taught in school," he said. "We've worked on that model for 21 years."

jmiller@intelligencer.ca

No comments: