Electronics Technician distance education program

The Electronics Technician (ET) Distance Education program provides flexible, skills-based training in electronics. It has been developed for adult learners pursuing electronics technician-level training through independent study, specifically students who cannot attend college full-time because of work or family commitments. The program was developed and launched in 1997 by Dr. Colin Simpson, a best-selling author and electronics professor at George Brown College in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Since then, the award-winning program has grown to become the largest of its kind in the world.

With over 10,000 students studying electronics at a distance, the ET distance education program has effectively broken down the barriers that prevent students from accessing technical course material on-line. Of note is that the program has broken the gender barrier in the study of electronics. Typically, less than 2% of students who study electronics in Colleges and Universities are female. In the ET distance education program almost 20% of the student’s are female, which has been attributed to the accessibility of the learning material and the integrative multimedia courseware which is designed to scaffold student learning and accommodate learning style differences.

In 1995, Simpson approached Joe Koenig, President of Electronics Workbench (EWB), with the concept of integrating course material from Simpson’s Principles of Electronics textbook with laboratory simulation software developed by EWB. The Learning Management System was developed by Logic Design Inc which integrated the course material, multimedia and simulation software, and included real-time testing and assessment. At the time, there was considerable opposition among the electronics education community regarding the use of simulation software for the delivery of electronics curriculum. Many educators felt that a “hands on” methodology was the only valid method of learning electronics, and that simulation was a less-effective substitute.

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