UNB Art Centre and Centre for Musical Arts Go Virtual
Author: UNB College of Extended Learning
Posted on Nov 25, 2020
Category: Music , UNB Art Centre , Leisure Learning , News and Events
While COVID-19 may have restricted movement of people from province to province, moving the UNB Art Centre's Leisure Learning courses and the Centre for Musical Arts programming online has opened up a whole new market for UNB CEL's personal and cultural enrichment programming.
Leisure Learning Online
"It didn't take us long to adjust from in-person classes to online, and in doing so we opened up new avenues for our Leisure Learning Program," says Azza Seif-El-Nasr, program coordinator at the UNB Art Centre.
Transitioning to an online format helped to reach a broader range of students and attract new instructors.
Pre-COVID, instructors and students needed to be within driving distance of UNB's Fredericton campus to attend Leisure Learning classes. Now that courses are online, students can participate from the comfort and safety of home from anywhere in the world.
"In the past, it was at times challenging to find instructors to teach courses on topics that our students request, but since going online, we have been able to recruit instructors from all over Canada," she explains.
Leisure Learning's German, French, and Wellness instructors are from different locations in New Brunswick and the Kundalini Yoga, and American Sign Language instructors live in Ontario.
"We have reached a wider range of students from all parts of NB."
According to our research, 30% of our students are from Fredericton, 62% come from across other parts of New Brunswick, and 8% come from beyond the NB borders from as far away as British Columbia, Ontario, and Nova Scotia.
There are many reasons why online courses have become popular. The UNB Art Centre and UNB CEL have developed a reputation as a leader in offering quality special interest courses in approximately 50 different topics!
"As our instructors and students become more familiar with this new method of delivery, we look forward to growing our list of courses as well as our list of satisfied customers,” says Azza.
UNB Centre for Musical Arts Online
The UNB Centre for Musical Arts (CMA) has a similar success story.
UNB's music activities also pivoted to virtual offerings to adapt to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
"Our wonderful instructors braved the world of online lessons and continued to teach their students over Teams and Zoom for the summer," says Mark Kleyn, Conservatory coordinator at the CMA.
Similar to Leisure Learning, moving online allowed them to offer lessons to students from across the Maritimes.
"We saw a definite uptick in our numbers of students taking lessons this summer," added Mark.
Resourceful CMA instructors took advantage of different online capabilities, including online theory lessons and building electronic music production and recording into their classes.
Mark says CMA also ran Music camps online, and everyone had a blast.
Some camp instructors have offered to make a series of videos with tips on warmups, technique, and what to look for in your gear. The videos will be posted online in the coming weeks.
"We are cooking up some plans for expanding these ideas into full Zoom workshops in the coming weeks."