MY ON-LINE ORGANIC COURSE
EXPERIENCE TO DATE

By Audrey Sarrazin

My heart skipped a beat when I learned of the on-line courses being offered by the Organic Agriculture Centre of Canada via Nova Scotia Agricultural College. Could these be the kind of courses I had been searching for, over the last couple of years?

Like many organic growers who had just followed their passions into this wonderful green way of growing things I was now starting to look for some of the "why" behind the "how-to" I had acquired over my 15 odd years of small scale organic gardening and farming. Yes, I wanted to validate my "hands-on", but quite unscientific, experience but I also wanted to build on this experience with some more formalized, college level academic knowledge. In a nutshell I was ready for the science and theory but I still needed a course that was realistic and practical.

I also had several logistical considerations. Being in a rural location and having a family and a full-time career outside of farming to maintain, daily travel to or residence at a college were both impractical. I needed the right courses offered with the right mix of theory and practice in a distance education format - online. A pretty tall order!

Organic Field Crop Management is an introductory course on organic principles and practices applied to the production and management of field crops. It is led by the instructor Desiree Jans, a graduate of the University of Alberta (1995) with a PhD in Soil Biology and Biochemistry. The course is divided into five modules; Soil and Field Management Practices in Organic Systems, Nutrient Management Planning in Organic Systems, Forages in Organic Systems, and the one I'm working on right now, Organic Row Crop Production. I will complete the course with Small Grain Production in Organic Systems.

Dr. Fernando Moncayo is the course instructor for the Organic Livestock Production. He is a practicing veterinarian with a Masters Degree in Biology from Dalhousie University (1992). This is an introductory course on organic livestock production. I am currently in the middle of the fourth module, Organic Swine and Poultry Production. So far I've completed the introduction to Organic Livestock Production, Organic Beef and Sheep Production and Organic Dairy Production.

In general, the information presented in both courses seems to be quite comprehensive and the issues raised are current and up to date. Both use a mixed bag of reference material, from videocassettes and textbooks (two COG Handbooks) to photocopy compilations and web based links. The last item alone represents a "goldmine" of information not only because of the incredible quantity but because it has been "pre-sifted and sorted" by some very knowledgeable experts. To me, the resources alone have been worth the $430 tuition fee for each course. Add that to the wonderful flexibility of web based learning and sometimes I think I've gone to heaven! I can't help but think back to the long lineups at the music library or the huge lecture halls seating 3 or 4 hundred students when I did my music degree back in the 70's.

An important part of these courses involves online discussion. There is an impressive cross-section of agriculture represented by the students, who are from diverse backgrounds and from across the country and beyond. The contributions are interesting and varied.

Assignments serve to focus the information gathered in the research and discussions into cohesive, logical units. But there's more than just a practical aspect as well. In one assignment we had to visit a local conventional farm and explore what it would take to convert it to an organic operation.
My experience with these courses so far has been overwhelmingly positive. My biggest concerns, whether I would have the study and organizational skills necessary to work on my own and keep up with the course's hectic pace, (it has been, after all, more than twenty-five years since I've studied anything this intensively), have not been a major problem. At first the time pressures were such that I handed some assignments in late, by a couple of days, and I paid the price in marks. But now that I'm a little more up to speed with the web-based research, discussions and course content tracking I'm feeling more comfortable with the pace. I would, however, recommend a really thorough skills review of Internet surfing, Windows file management, and word processing for anybody thinking of taking a distance learning, web-based course like this one. Those skills are critical.

Overall, I have found the course so interesting and challenging that I just make sure my life is organized (with lots of help from my family) to include lots of study time. I certainly had high expectations of any courses I might take, both in content and logistics, and so far the two courses I'm enrolled in with the Organic Agriculture Centre of Canada, have exceeded these expectations.