University of Alberta Online and Continuing Education

I'm taking the U of A's Occupational Health & Safety program (certificate & diploma) via their Continuing Education department. all in all, the entire program is taking me a total of 3 years to complete, although for most semesters I took a lot of classes. with the extra time I need to wait for my diploma to be processed (6 months after submitting my application IIRC), my total time eclipsed will be closer to almost 4 years. pros: + overall, I learned SO MUCH through taking these courses. not just about OH&S, but about workplaces and leadership too. + registration is relatively straightforward, especially with CERegister. that site is waaaayyy easier to navigate than whatever I've heard was (is?) going on with Beartracks. you're also not fighting against other students for seats like tickets to a k-pop concert. + similarly, getting enrollment verification documents from CERegister is also a breeze (and FREE!). + the program is entirely taken online. in asynchronous classes, you do the work by your own schedule; in synchronous ones, you attend real-time lectures via Zoom (more on that later...). + my professors were very informed in their subject area(s), dedicated to teaching and motivated to helping students succeed. + text materials are usually offered for free or at a low cost. + most classes are open-book (but of course course material comprehension is still a must). + your peers mostly consist of people who've been in the workforce or are currently in the workforce. they have fantastic work ethic; everyone contributes fairly to group discussions/projects/etc, and I've never seen anyone use generative AI for their work (that I know of). cons: - some classes are only available to be taken once a year. if you're not able to register for a class, you'll have to wait until the following year just to enroll. - also, there was another class, for the Fall semester, that I kept an eye on. it's my very last one to take before I can apply for graduation completion of my diploma...the class registration didn't pop up until this August, in spite of Fall registration being available earlier. - synchronous classes are a nightmare. to my knowledge they usually last 2-4 days, 5-7 hours of classtime PER DAY. counting the IIRC usually 1 hr breaks you get, that's 6-8 hours total. this is the main reason I wanted to make my review, to caution people about what they're getting into. I suffered through so much mental stress and burnout because of the way these classes are structured, and got into some poor coping mechanisms too. I've tried providing feedback about this, but the hours-long format never changed during my time with this program (my upcoming Fall class does divide its four days into two days per week though). - getting my graduation completion was also a nightmare because of the wait time. - because this is a Continuing Education program, you don't get the same benefits as you would taking a degree at the U of A (no Arc Card, no university health insurance, etc), which is understandable; I think CE was built for working professionals. - I've had at least one class where an assessment was closed-book, but there was no proctoring involved. this opens the door for possible cheating. fortunately because the majority of my classes were open-book, this was not something I encountered very often.

I love University of Alberta.

I went here to take the French language courses. If you're looking to learn a foreign language this is definitely where you wanna go.