David Edwards and Charlie Diamond notice something different about their welding apprenticeship class.

“It’s looking pretty smooth,” Diamond observes as he looks at the screen. “Maybe they bumped it up.”

Diamond is speaking about the video feed that is streaming over the new Alberta Supernet. Through video conferencing, the two young Jasper men are able to learn interactively from a small room in the Provincial building. On the television, four small boxes appear, each a live feed from a different location. There is the classroom from Drayton Valley, from Hinton and a linkup to a boardroom in Edson. Finally, the instructors and dignitaries come online from the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology in Edmonton.

This pilot project examining the utility of video conferencing for trades programs has provided Diamond and Edwards with a unique opportunity. They can complete the classroom sections of their welding course without ever leaving home.

“It’s so convenient for me to live in my own town and not have to go to the city,” Edwards says. About 80 per cent of the program is practical and the two students are able to work on that aspect of their training without disruption. It’s also a better situation for their employer, Dave Prockiw. 

“They don’t have to leave work and go on EI to finish up the course,” he says. “Now they’re asking me all sorts of questions on the job, too.”

On this frigid Friday morning, the welder and his young charges have taken  some time out of their day to take part in a special event honouring the program. At NAIT, Advanced Education Minister Dave Hancock takes the podium to speak about the possibility of expanding the program.

“This is a great leap forward,” he says. Alberta is booming, and there is an urgent need for well-trained tradespeople all over the province. The time is right to investigate alternatives to delivering that knowledge, Hancock says. Preventing an expensive and disruptive trip to city-based institutions is one way to achieve this.

”The cost of getting to school is often greater than going to school,” he says, as the apprentices across the region listen restlessly.

 “As someone who grew up in Fort Vermilion, I can tell you how many people might want to take advantage of this. We anticipate that it will expand across Alberta to all parts of the province and incorporate all of the trades.”

Hancock’s delivery might not be captivating his audience, but his message is right on target, according to Dave Prockiw.

“I think it’s only going to get bigger  and better,” he says. Currently courses are offered for first-year welding and electrician apprentices, and there is local interest and participation for both. Prockiw has spoken to his colleagues in the carpentry business and says that they would be eager to see a similar opportunity for young people wanting to learn the tools of that trade.

There are few practical differences for the two students. They pay the same tuition they would if they were in Edmonton, making a slight savings on course materials. Their instructor follows the minister’s speech with a brief demonstration of the classroom environment. Questions are asked and answered with little more than a few second’s delay. The equipment is also capable of playing video and multimedia presentations, originating in Edmonton, to all linked classrooms. 

Despite the nearly complete replication of the educational experience, Edwards expects that he will study for some time in the city, eventually. The video conferencing option may be extended to the second and third years of the program, but there is something to be said for some time out of Jasper, Edwards believes.

“I’d do it just for a change, for the experience,” he says. “I’ve been in Jasper my whole life so I wouldn’t mind going to Edmonton for a bit.”

Prockiw, who attended NAIT, teases his young charges about the various benefits of college life that they are missing out on, especially the students in the hairdressing program.

If the video conferencing option is to grow in Jasper, it is likely that the Yellowhead Regional Education Consortium (YREC) would need to look for a more capacious room. One possibility raised on Friday would be a joint-use facility shared with the Grande Yellowhead Regional Division (GYRD).

The school division already provides the YREC facilities with background technology support for the video conferencing program, including access to the Supernet, the provincial high-bandwidth internet network.

Any formal arrangment for sharing space would involve negotiation and a contract, according to the GYRD’s Nicole Merrifield, and is unlikely to happen in the current environment in Jasper.

“There’s already a pretty substantial space crunch,” she says. GYRD facilities, including the two Jasper schools, are equipped with video conferencing capability. A Japanese class taught regionally is on offer for high school students, and the technology is also used for professional development and administrative purposes. Having had the capability since 2004, Merrifield says that the range of actvities the GYRD can use video conferencing for will only increase.

“We are looking at more opportunites to expand the use of video conferencing in the classroom and for other purposes as well.”

Back at the Provincial building, the suits offer a rare moment of candour as they discuss the high quality of the connection.

“We are doing active research to find out what the conditions are that cause an interruption in the link,” says Dr. Sam Shaw, the president of NAIT. “I think that with the Minister coming today we see some improvements ... our technicians were in here and at around 6:30 this morning it suddenly became this smooth!”

As the event wraps up, the welders head out for another day on the job. They have another class scheduled for next week, but they know it’s just around the corner, rather than a few hundred kilometres away.