Staff at the Pontiac Continuing Education Centre (PCEC) have spent the past few years creating an online course delivery system to make classes more accessible to students, and are now expanding it to include the centre’s personal support worker (PSW) program. 

The centre rolled out its new online course delivery system last fall in the commerce program, which features diploma programs in both secretarial and accounting. Centre director Deb Stephens said the rollout has been successful enough that they wanted to include the personal support worker program – a course the centre has offered for quite some time but in which registration dropped after the pandemic. 

Stephens said she noticed fewer students were able to consistently attend courses in-person, and wanted to offer them an alternative to the traditional model.  “They just couldn’t make it here for the in-class sessions,” she said, adding that the centre started considering an expanded online delivery as a possible solution. 

The centre rolled out the online component in the commerce program in the fall of 2025. The expanded offering allows students to access courses in one of three ways: in-class in real time, virtually in real time, or at the student’s own pace.

Commerce teacher Adam Thompson, who has been helping to develop the new online system, said the goal of the rollout was to help meet students where they’re at, knowing that some of them can’t necessarily make it into the classroom during regular school hours. 

“Our learners, we realize they have jobs, they have kids, they have all kinds of stuff going on. So we need to be a lot more flexible about our scheduling, we need to find ways to let them do exams close to home,” he said. 

Stephens said the commerce program transitioned to a more “individualized” course delivery with continuous entry about 10 years ago, which allowed students a bit more flexibility in the timing of the program, but she said students still needed more flexibility in how they can access the instruction. 

“People are looking for more flexibility now in terms of how they access learning, so we were able to take that and then simply add the hybrid delivery. You could be here in person, but you could also be online,” she said. 

Stephens said the centre’s success with the commerce program made the school look at where else it could implement online instruction. “Then we decided, well, let’s look at our healthcare,” she said. 

“They can do it on their computer here with the teacher, or they can be at home for the theory part. And then what we’ve done is we’ve taken all the practical hands-on stuff and it will be one day a week,” she said. 

Thompson said overall the rollout of the online commerce program has been well received by students, and has helped the centre grow beyond just the Pontiac to now include large groups of students from the Gatineau and Montreal areas. 

“We have all three models. We have the in-class, online, and then E-Learn, which is do it at your own pace [ . . . ] The flexibility has been huge, just allowing students to access the program they want in whatever model they’re looking for,” he said. 

Thompson said there have been small hiccups along the way. Teachers now have to balance students both in-person and online, each of whom is making different progress throughout the course, which he said has been a learning curve. Also, the centre now has to accommodate exam times for students from other parts of the province who can’t write at PCEC. 

“Every time somebody signs up in a new place, we have to find a way to get an exam center in their region and then coordinate,” he said, 

Commerce teacher Bonnie McLachlin said it was a learning curve getting used to staying on top of this many students in person and online. 

“The tracking is unbelievable. If you finish an exam tomorrow, I need to get you into the new module right away [ . . . ] I was working on a project Monday and I felt like I was gone for a year,” she said. 

Thompson said that’s why the centre rolled out the delivery with a small group of students before bringing it out in full force

“Now we’re at about 40 [students], which is probably where we want to stay for the rest of the year, so that we can get some of these things worked out,” he said. 

Stephens said although the rollout is still fairly new, the online instruction has gotten good feedback from both teachers and students, and she expects it to bring up registrations for the centre’s programs. 

“The thing to me that says if a program is successful or not is if the students are staying, which they are, and if they’re being successful. And they’re progressing really well with this, and I think it’s because they can tailor the schedule to meet their needs and their lives,” she said.

Thompson said he has been helping teachers in the PSW program get used to the online delivery method as the school gets closer to the expected start date. Stephens said if they reach enough students registered in the program, they will begin the first entry in March, with another registration period every quarter after that. 

Stephens said the advantages of the PSW program are being able to get trained in a field that needs workers.

“We have an aging population, they are using them in hospitals, they’re using them in schools, they’re using them in daycares [ . . . ] on both sides of the river. Work is everywhere,” she said. 

She emphasized that the PSW program is offered tuition-free thanks to a subsidy from the Quebec government, and that students only need to prove that they are a resident of Quebec to gain eligibility. 

Stephens said there is only so many hours of the PSW program that can be completed online, so a minimum of five hours must be done in-person at the centre. 

Applicants to the program must have their papers in before Feb. 20. Anyone who is interested in registering may speak to administrative assistant Sara Knox at 819-647-5605.