They met the challenge!

PSY.

TRIC
NURSING
DEPARTMENT

WE MET THE
CHALLENGE

Palliative Care certificate
More parking & classrooms

Portfolio excerpts
Sports round-up
INside Zone

ouuaanNn

THE DOUGLAS COLLEGE NEWSLETTER Mf MAY 1995

Annette Finlay (left) and
Diane Emmerich from the
Psychiatric Nursing
Department responded to a
friendly challenge from the
Department of Child, Family
& Community Studies to
collect peace packs containing
clothing, exercise books,
pencils and games for children
in war-torn Mozambique.
They collected 19 and some
extra items, all of which they
turned over to the Library’s
Susan Fleming, the person
who got the whole thing going
at Douglas College back in
February. There’s still time to
get involved - call Susan at
local 5195.

 

Students challenge credit courses via PLA

hese days, it seems like nothing in
post-secondary education is certain
except change itself.

A new wrinkle in the Department of
Child, Family & Community Studies is
Prior Learning Assessment (PLA). It’s not
unheard of; students have long been able
to challenge courses at Douglas College.
The difference is that now the College
helps them do it more effectively.

There are more adults than ever before
re-entering the post-secondary system,
and often they return with the kind of on-
the-job experience that learners fresh out

of high school can only hope to acquire
one day.

Prior Learning Assessment provides
recognition of, and more importantly,
academic credits for, the learning people
have gained outside of the classroom.
PLA Pilot Project Coordinator Carol
Ebner calls PLA a powerful tool for
people with prior learning experiences of
various kinds.

“Tt has great implications for lifelong
learning and multiple careers, especially if
you believe the futurists who say we’ ll all
have four or five careers. With the time

that people can save, it also saves training
dollars and opens up seats for other
people,” she says.

Ebner, Richard Norman, and Martha
Entin teach CFCS 100 - Portfolio
Development, a three-credit course that’s
being offered for the first time this
semester as a department-wide course in
CFCS. Using reflection, analysis, and
documentation, the course guides the
student in developing a portfolio of prior
learning, which, when completed,
contains an autobiography, educational

PLA continued on page 3