Continuing Education-What It Takes to Be With It

Abstract

Abstract With the rapid expansion of knowledge in all fields, the technical man has to guard himself against obsolescence by actively pursuing a program of continuing education. What is involved? In short, time, money and effort on the part of the individual are needed. A brief outline of the available forms of continuing education is given, and these are discussed with regard to time, money and effort. Whether a person is located in Drayton Valley or Calgary, it is possible to follow a continuing education program to suit each particular location or situation. Theresponsibility for setting and pursuing such a programrests mainly with the individual, but the climate that a company sets is important also. Introduction Most Engineering don't argue about the need for continuing education – they admit that continuing education is essential. There is, however, a great gap between admitting to a situation and doing something about it. Continuing education, as discussed in this paper, is thought of as an educational program that a technical man sets for himself in order to stay abreast of thenew developments within his chosen industry. This goes beyond on-the-job training, as the latter would merely qualify him for a new assignment or position. Continuing education for a young engineer may initially mean a formal one- or two-year company trainingprogram, but it must not stop there. It should be, asthe word implies, a continuously ongoing process of study in one's chosen field of endeavour. This paper points the way to such a program. Brief Outline Of Sources Of Continuing Education For reference purposes mainly it is necessary to set down briefly the various sources of continuing education that are available. Not all of these will be readily available to everyone, but, on the other hand, everyone has access to at least two or three of the following:Technical meetings or seminars, usually put on by technical societies, companies or educational institutions.Formal one to three-week courses given by a university school of technology or P .I.T .S.Evening term courses consisting of one or two lectures per week, available at the universities or technical schools.Correspondence courses.Subscriptions to a great variety of technical and trade journals.Books. What Does It Take To Participate In Continuing Education? The three obvious and essential things that are required in almost any endeavour are time, money and effort. Of these three, the last, namely effort, is the most important. Effort is the action taken to bring about the desired end result. This applies to any endeavour, as, for example, the team effort to design and build the rockets to land a man on the moon and return him to earth. In this example, the team effort of thousands of people was required to bring about the desired results. Because continuing education is a very individual endeavour, benefiting firstly the individual, it can only be brought about by the individual himself.