Certificate in Personal Support Worker

at Durham College - Oshawa Campus Canada

This program was developed with input from veterans in the digital entertainment industry and continues to garner enthusiastic support from studios and professional artists across the country. Our industry trained professors are ready to share their knowledge and experience with you. The focus of this hands-on program is to develop and hone your skills as a digital artist through project-based learning and instruction.

You will explore environment and level design, employing modelling, surfacing, lighting techniques and special effects in industry leading real-time engines. All of your work will be supported by a strong foundation in animation for games, technical art, and concept art.

You will gain a solid base in the skills needed to explore new technology and software with confidence including courses in:

• Preproduction design
• Traditional drawing and digital illustration
• Game asset creation employing industry current techniques
• Demo reel production and online portfolio development

Industry context is also strongly emphasized though the use of production pipelines and studio simulation. As a graduate, you will enter the industry with strong technical and creative ability, a realistic understanding of the world of game production and a keen sense of professionalism.

Become an integral part of assuring the safety and integrity of our infrastructure, components and structures that are built or are in service in our society. Learn about materials and specific testing methods in order to examine cars, trains, airplanes, spacecraft, towers, bridges, ships, power plants and amusement park rides to identify and analyze possible defects. With education, training, and practical experience under your belt, you will be prepared to begin your training in industry as an inspector to test and evaluate components for internal or external flaws, using advanced technology including visual inspection and radiology/radiographic techniques, allowing people to live and work in a safe environment.

This program will provide you with the education, training and practical experience necessary to begin a career in non-destructive evaluation/testing (NDT).

You will learn how to examine cars, trains, airplanes, spacecraft, towers, bridges, ships, power plants and amusement park rides without causing damage or impairment to their future use, hence the term non-destructive. The purpose of testing in this fashion is to detect possible internal or external defects and examine the properties of an object.

This program is regulated by the Canadian General Standards Board (CGSB) and provides eligibility to write certification exams upon graduation. A minimum 70 per cent is required in Introduction to Non-Destructive Testing, Mathematics for Technology II and Ultrasonic Testing I in order to obtain a course credit. Other Non-Destructive Testing courses will require a 70 per cent grade to be eligible for a training certificate.

As a graduate, you will also be eligible for membership in the Ontario Association of Certified Engineering Technicians and Technologists.

Please note: Candidates should not have a fear of confined spaces or heights. Prior to certification exams, tests of visual acuity  are required. Some organizations also require a police check prior to employment.

If you see yourself in a career that involves the design, testing, installation and maintenance of computer hardware and software systems, the Computer Systems Technology program is for you. This program is built on partnerships with some of the most influential names in networking today, including Cisco, IBM and Microsoft. With additional education in systems analysis, database administration and system and network security, this program creates multi-skilled graduates who can respond flexibly to the complex hardware, software and application needs and problems in today’s information technology environment. You will learn in new state-of-the-art labs and work with professors who are connected to industry.

NOTE: Students enrolling in this program are required to purchase their own laptop. For specific hardware and software requirements for this program click here.

Graduates of the three-year Computer Systems Technology program are ready to meet the information technology (IT) needs of the business, industry, service and government sectors. You will be trained to plan, implement and analyze IT solutions based on various operating systems, networking technologies and computer programming languages.

The curriculum addresses:

• Advanced topics in network management
• Communication protocols
• CISCO switches and networks
• Microsoft Servers and applications.
• Mail servers
• Security
• Unified Communications enterprise-level management of server platforms

As a graduate, you will have the skills and expertise required to be an active participant in the planning and implementation of the information security programs and procedures required by modern organizations due to increasingly stringent reporting and privacy regulations. You will also be able to deploy Internet servers for the web, email and network services.

The multiple skills you will gain through this program will enable you to challenge for industry-recognized certifications including Cisco (e.g. CCNA, CCNP and CCNA Security); Microsoft (e.g. MCP and MCSE); and CompTIA (e.g. A+, Network+ and Linux+).

Note: To ensure you make an informed decision about your IT career path, a common first semester is offered for the Computer Systems Technician, Computer Systems Technology, Computer Programmer and Computer Programmer Analyst programs. This approach will give you an opportunity to explore the systems/programming applications and networking/hardware applications of the IT sector.

Co-operative education (co-op):

For students starting the program as of September 2019, entrance into the co-op option is competitive. Students will be invited to apply to the co-op option during their first year of study. Students who qualify for co-op will be eligible to complete a four-month, paid work term between the second and third years of their program.

From magazine ads and interactive graphics to book covers and digital signage, graphic designers have the power to express emotions, influence decisions and bring ideas to life. Students learn to design and produce logos, brochures, magazine layouts and annual reports. Graduates of this program create advertising and branding campaigns, corporate identity systems, and packaging prototypes. They develop two and three-dimensional illustrations and produce integrated media content for the web.

NOTE: Students enrolling in this program are required to purchase their own laptop.

This program prepares graduates for work as entry-level designers. Students learn skills required to solve specific visual problems through practical work that covers a broad spectrum of visual communication in corporate, editorial, advertising and package design. The program of studies in first year includes:

• Design concepts
• Digital technology
• Drawing
• Fundamentals of design
• Typography

Your second and third year will give you an opportunity to apply these principles to a variety of design problems.

Other areas of study include:

• Advertising
• Branding
• Editorial and corporate design
• History of art
• History of graphic design
• Packaging
• Photography

You will spend your sixth semester off campus as an intern at a design or in-house studio. As a graduating student, you will have the opportunity to display design projects from your Portfolio Studies course at an annual student spring exhibit in Toronto.

Career options:

• Art director
• Creative director
• Digital art director
• Digital production designer
• Freelance graphic designer
• Graphic designer
• Marketing co-ordinator
• Production artist
• Prepress technician
• Web designer

With the rate of Ontarians living with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) continuing to rise, so is the need for skilled professionals who are prepared to use evidence-based interventions to support individuals, as well as their families and caregivers. In this program, which focuses on children, older youth and adults in a variety of settings, students will develop expertise in the collaborative design, implementation and evaluation of effective behavioural intervention plans, according to the principles of Applied Behaviour Analysis. They will also gain valuable work experience through two supervised field placements.

If you want to create award-winning advertising and marketing campaigns, this program is for you. We live in an age of digital disruption. In order for advertisers to compete for ‘screen-time’ they must develop engaging content that harnesses the power to connect with consumers. As marketers strive to increase their share of consumer attention, they must research how people are spending time across multiple devices and platforms. When you understand consumer markets and behaviour, you can create great advertising campaigns.

The Advertising and Marketing Communications program prepares you with the knowledge, skills and experience for an exciting career in the advertising industry. You can work at an agency, research or production firm, or within a media company; we will help you choose the path that best suits your skill-set. You will gain experience as an account manager and production artist working for campus media, and have the opportunity to participate in the college advertising agency – ‘collaboragency’. Our students manage real accounts and deliver both strategic and creative recommendations to achieve client goals.

From touchscreen applications and websites to motion design and video, interactive media designers create the User Experience (UX). In this cutting-edge program, students learn to design and produce illustrations, photography, infographics and animations for anything interactive. Graduates of this program become skilled compositors, able to create motion graphics, virtual environments and integrated media content.

Whether it’s a small business or a large publicly traded corporation, accounting professionals are needed in all areas of the economy, in both the public and private sectors. Our program is taught by industry-connected professors who will give you the skills and knowledge to excel in the field. You will learn how to apply the latest tools and technologies – making you instantly valuable to an employer.

You will have the opportunity to hone your skills and gain valuable work experience through a co-operative education (co-op) option or field placement. This program gives you a powerful combination of knowledge, skills and real-life work experience. 

Students in this program explore the nature of creative storytelling by writing, shooting and editing documentaries, short narratives and corporate videos. As you become technically proficient and critically informed, you’ll tap into the power of video to capture the compelling stories of our time, and create fictional stories in fictional worlds. Learn camera operation, composition, lighting, sound design, post-production, and the entrepreneurial skills needed to operate a small video production business.

The Video Production program will prepare you for a career in the exciting world of film, video and television. You will be introduced to:

• Basic principles of electronic field production
• Composition
• Lighting
• Principles of camera operation
• Sound design
• Studio production
• Video editing

The program will also help you develop an editing practice that is technically proficient and critically informed in addition to learning how to:

• Build and design a portfolio suitable for various markets
• Price, estimate and invoice assignments
• Protect your copyright
• Register and operate a small video production business.

NOTE: Students enrolling in this program are required to purchase their own laptop. For specific hardware and software requirements for this program  click here.

This joint Durham College and Ontario Tech University (Ontario Tech) diploma-to-degree program will enable you to earn both credentials in only four years. Experience the best of both learning environments while on the journey to a rewarding career in the computer systems technician field.

In today’s world of personal computers, networking and applications, computer systems technicians are in high demand. After acquiring the expertise required to build, maintain and repair the latest in technology, you will test-drive new ideas and restore old favourites to working order. You will learn in state-of-the-art labs from professors who are connected to industry. This program is built on partnerships with some of the most influential names in networking today, including Cisco, IBM and Microsoft.