Laurier to offer education courses in Waterloo

For students who are uncertain of their future, electives offered at university are a great opportunity to experiment in different faculties. As of this fall, Wilfrid Laurier University  students are  able to minor in education.

This option was previously unavailable to students .

“What changed is that we decided as a faculty that it would be good to give undergraduate students the chance to explore the field of education before they actually committed to going into a Bachelor of Education program,” explained Colleen Willard-Holt, dean of education.

The minor consists of three core, half-credit courses entitled: Images of Education in the Media, The Educational Divide and Learning in 140 Characters or Less. From here, students must also take three elective, half-credit courses from an approved list.

“The electives … are from a wide range of programs,” said Willard-Holt.

“The point of this is to help them use courses that they already would have taken in their major and allow them to use it for their minor as well.”

In order to accommodate this change some electives were altered from the list available to those who minor in education.

Part of this process involved asking departments at WLU to suggest applicable courses.

The core courses will not be available to students until the spring and summer terms.

“There are so many transferable skills in education that are used in a lot of different fields,” she explained. “Even in the corporate world a lot of people are training other workers or becoming educators in some way.”

Willard-Holt hopes that the opportunity to minor in education will give students a chance to find out what it’s really like to be a teacher “so that they can make an informed decision when the time comes whether or not they want to pursue it in earnest.”

Currently this option is only available at the Waterloo campus, but the possibility of online courses is being looked into.