NUNAVUT - The more than $4.9 million in funding announced by the Nunavut and federal governments on Sept. 23 will provide more Nunavummiut with the opportunity to take Arctic College courses without having to leave their communities, according to Daniel Vandermeulen, president of Nunavut Arctic College.

“Our long-term goal is to provide more adult learning opportunities in communities so that people don’t have to relocate,” said Vandermeulen.

Currently, students taking courses not available in their home communities must move to attend their program.

Students taking particular courses have to move to communities that offer their program at the community learning centre, or to a community with an Arctic College campus, depending on the program. The new funding will mean these courses could be made available through distance learning. Students would be able to complete their program without having to leave their home community, Vandermeulen said.

“We’re going to first start with basic preparatory courses that we would commonly find our College Foundation program,” he said. “As time and resources permit, we start delivering various entry level courses into our diploma programs.”

The first step to improving the communications infrastructure at the colleges and learning centres is to complete the GN’s Cyber Infrastructure Project, according to Eric Corneau, manager of technology services with the Nunavut Research Institute. The project aims to replace current cabling systems with fibre optic cabling.

“Right now, all the colleges and community learning centres are connecting through copper and other kinds of cabling, which are quite slow,” Corneau said.

Corneau said fibre optic cabling will “allow a more rapid data transfer between the colleges and its users.”

This means users downloading a file, for example, will be able to do it much quicker than is currently possible.

“Something that would have taken 20 minutes before will probably take half as much time,” he said.

It also means that all 25 communities will be running at the same speed, Corneau said.

“Everybody is going to be on a level playing field in all 25 communities,” he said.

Anyone with access to a community learning centre will benefit from the improvements to the system, including researchers in the territory, Corneau said.

“Researchers will be able to receive and transmit larger data,” he said.

It will also be possible to do video conferences and live webcasts. The bandwidth is being administered by the Canadian Space Agency, Corneau and Vandermeulen said.

Vandermeulen said the technical upgrades are expected to be finished in March 2011 and pilot distance education courses through Arctic College could be available that fall.