Portable shop classrooms provide hands-on training

If you build it, they will come. If you move it, more will come. That’s the simple strategy of mobile education in providing more access to trades training in Alberta, an essential boon to remote Aboriginal communities seeking an entry point to working in the industrial sector.

Innovative Trailer Design Industries has created 53-foot trailers that can, in minutes, convert into portable shop classrooms to provide hands-on training in an atmosphere that’s remarkably similar to a machine shop or other industrial workplace.

Denis Caron, who runs a branch of Innovative Trailer Design, saw an opportunity when Alberta Education announced a $79-million initiative to expand career education opportunities and solidify a skilled and knowledgeable workforce.

“It’s part of their 10-year plan to put together these education initiatives and they identified career and technology studies as a priority in northern Alberta,” said Caron.

So far Caron’s company, based in Saskatchewan, has set up nine mobile training labs: two at the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology (dubbed NAIT in Motion), one with the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, two in the Palliser school region in southern Alberta, and one each in the Grassland, Prairieland, Northern Lights and Northland school divisions.
“In the school divisions the trailers are being used for high school CTS training in rural areas, where they set it up at one school and bus in students from nearby schools to use the facility,” said Caron.

“They get credit for CTS training and the next semester, the trailer rolls to another district. It provides training in trades the schools otherwise wouldn’t have access to. At the college level, students use them more for apprenticeship training from welding to pipefitting and then for certificate training.”

Caron added that the two units at NAIT, which can each accommodate 12 students at a time, were created to garner more Aboriginal interest in the trades. If they’re inclined to go the blue-collar vocational route, the labs are used as a transition for them to enter the college system.

“Aboriginal communities make up the fastest growing segment of Canada’s population,” said Sam Shaw, president and CEO of NAIT, who instantly saw the potential of Innovative Trailer Design’s trailer labs. “The NAIT in Motion units will bring training and employment opportunities to communities where the possibility had never existed before.”

Shaw noted that by 2015, the Aboriginal population will account for one in five young Albertans.

Caron couldn’t say how many Aboriginal students are taking advantage of these mobile trades facilities. He has seen first-hand the interest in youths checking out the trailers and their ability to open their eyes to the advantage of pursuing industrial trades opportunities in the province. Caron sees it as a low-cost and efficient win-win situation.

“They’re also more equitable and accessible, the price tag isn’t bad and the government doesn’t have to duplicate the facilities and equipment from region to region. They’re also quite self-contained; you can set up shop in 20 minutes,” said Caron.