Frontier College is well known for it’s Student Centred Individualized Learning (SCIL) approach to helping people improve their literacy skills. Since SCIL is a flexible, student-centred, qualitative approach to learning, Frontier College is looking at ways use qualitative methods to document the effectiveness of their learning interventions.

This book presents a selection of qualitative tools to help Frontier College staff document learning. The book provides an updating of SCIL and its relation to “hybrid literacy”; a brief definition of “qualitative” versus “quantitative” with examples of qualitative tools applied across three levels of practice (micro/direct, macro/indirect, meta/capacity building); various methods for recording learning progress; a brief description of qualitative software and potential uses for Frontier College; and an overview of Independent Studies’ publications that outline further qualitative methods.