Distance education

This paper describes the first phase of Getting Online (GO), a national project funded by the Office of Literacy and Essential Skills (OLES), Human Resources and Skills Development Canada (HRSDC), to explore the experiences and expectations of adult literacy workers with regard to online professional development.

This report, prepared by the National Adult Literacy Agency (NALA) in Ireland, analyzes and compares the findings from three research projects carried out in 2010.

While enrolment patterns can vary widely both within and between provinces, the fact is that there are simply not as many school-age children in Canada as there were just a few years ago. In particular, the last of the large cohort of children born to the baby boomers between 1980 and 1994 have graduated from the kindergarten to Grade 12 system, and the children taking their places are part of a much smaller cohort.

This is a bibliography prepared by the author in conjunction with an online professional development seminar presented in April 2012.

This report describes a review of the training and certification system used by Laubach Literacy Ontario (LLO) to ensure that tutor and trainer competencies required by all levels in LLO’s current certification system were identified. The project, which began in January 2009, was considered one of the affiliated projects in support of the Ontario Adult Literacy Curriculum initiative.

This report provides an overview of a literacy tutor-training pilot project delivered via videoconferencing through the iCCAN project, a not-for-profit provincial network of videoconferencing sites. The project was undertaken in association with the Rural Routes Initiative at Alberta’s Norquest College.

In the project, two groups each received two sessions, each two hours in length, of videoconferencing professional development.

Open and distance educational institutions share a commitment to principles of access and flexibility which, in turn, reflect a set of foundational beliefs that shape learning activity. Housed within this broad mandate is an explicit recognition of the presence and value of mature learners’ prior learning.

While the recognition of prior learning at post-secondary institutions in Canada is not widely practiced, it constitutes a solid plank in Athabasca University's mission as an open and distance institution. Although both challenge-for-credit and portfolio assessment strategies are used at AU, learners are best able to control their destinies and celebrate their diversities by engaging in the reflexive portfolio processes.

This book is a guide to developing and using a blended approach to learning. Blended learning combines the best features of face-to-face sessions with the flexibility of e-learning. This guide demonstrates how learners can blend the best resources, technology, and practices from the e-learning world into their particular settings.

This is a research report on a project begun in 2003 that explored the possibilities for distance and flexible delivery of the Literacy and Basic Skills (LBS) Program in the province of Ontario. The project addresses the literacy needs of various traditionally under-served populations and consists of two phases.