In any discussion about distance education in Canada, AthabascaUniversity (AU) is typically a significant portion of the conversation.

AU is a "single mode" institution, which means it does not have a traditional physical campus, and all it does is distance education, as opposed to a "dual-mode" institution, which is an institution that provides both traditional classroom-based education and distance education. AU’s central office is located in the Town of Athabasca, which is about 90 miles north of Edmonton.

Growing Canadian Student Body

AU started more than 30 years ago in 1970. Between 1972 and 1975, AU enrolled 650 students. On March 31, 2004, total student enrollments were tallied at 33,597 (30,785 undergraduate students and 2,812 graduate students). About 95 percent of all AU students live in Canada. About 45 percent of AU’s undergraduates live in the province of Alberta, and about 25 percent live in the province of Ontario. AU’s graduate students are primarily from Ontario (39 percent), with Alberta ranking second (26 percent). In June 2004, AU saw 854 of its students graduate, 12 percent more than 2003 and 250 percent more than five years ago.

AU is called "Canada’s Open University," meaning, basically, that it is dedicated to removing the barriers to a university education. It is modeled after the concept of open and distance learning. Some of the hallmarks of AU’s "openness" is that it has an open admission policy without entrance requirements at the undergraduate level, and it has a continuous enrollment that lets students register and start their courses throughout the year.

Individualized study is AU’s most common distance education delivery mode, with 85 percent of its total student population enrolled in such courses. AU’s School of Business has recently started to offer "e-Classes," which haven’t quite taken off yet. At the graduate level, AU offers what it calls "grouped study" courses, which are similar in format to U.S. graduate-level online learning programs (see page 6).

What has made AU so successful? According to AU’s Executive Director, External Relations, Stephen Murgatroyd, the institution’s "openness, flexibility and student-services culture" has fostered its relatively explosive growth. "The first thing is we are doing something different than most institutions with things like open access," he says. "You have to be 16 or older to be admitted. Not a lot of institutions are that open. The second thing is that the student is the driver, not the institution. So students determine when they will start, when they will call in an exam, and the pace at which they will complete a course or program. Third is we are a customer-service kind of place. Our call center and library services get accolades from our students; we have a set of service standards that we really believe in. It’s a philosophy that puts student services at the heart of what we do, and we judge ourselves very harshly around that."

In addition, AU is very much into forming partnerships and collaborations. "We have 260 agreements with institutions around the world," says Murgatroyd. These include agreements that provide for easy transferability of credit between universities, colleges and technical institutes throughout Alberta. For example, between eight to ten percent of all undergraduates at the University of Alberta, University of Calgary, and the University of Lethbridge have credits that they earned from AU. Plus, close to 3,000 students have transferred 15 credits or more to AU from Alberta community colleges or technical institutes.

Finally, "the other thing is that we recognize that there is always more for us to learn," Murgatroyd says. "We are very proud of who and where we are, but we realize that there is a heck of a lot more that we need to do."

www.athabascau.ca