Community Literacy of Ontario

This resource looks at various technologies that are used to deliver online learning, and provides examples of promising practices in the field.

The document is divided into four main sections. The first section focuses on instructional websites for adult learners, which includes instructional resources related to numeracy, communication skills, employment, general interest, and using the Internet.

This bibliography is designed to help practitioners find resources and make decisions about which available resources best suit their needs. The authors have prepared a brief annotation for each resource listed and have also included web contact and purchase information for each item.

While many community literacy organizations are based on one-to-one tutoring, some also offer training for small groups of learners. An organization might use the group approach because of a shortage of volunteers or because some learners progress faster in a group.

The publisher of this document, Community Literacy of Ontario, is a network of more than a hundred community literacy agencies. The goal of this resource guide is to help those agencies strengthen their performance.

The authors have included chapters on financial management; human resources management; risk management; and customer service. They also discuss strategic planning; program evaluation; board governance; and marketing.

This report grew out of a project entitled Provincial Partnerships to Promote Essential Skills: Motivation, Process and Outcomes. The partners agreed to focus on an Essential Skills resource for frontline practitioners and they developed a manual for that purpose. Originally, the focus was on developing a workshop that could be presented in venues appropriate to each of the project partners.

This report is the result of a project led by Ontario's College Sector Committee for Adult Upgrading (CSC), in partnership with three other provincial organizations involved in adult literacy and upgrading: Community Literacy of Ontario (CLO), Ontario Association of Continuing Education School Board Administrators (CESBA) and the Ontario Native Literacy Coalition (ONLC).

During Community Literacy of Ontario’s preliminary work on a practitioner training strategy, practitioners expressed the need to develop a training resource for literacy practitioners, specifically for paid staff. This manual is the response to that need.

The author has based the manual on input from practitioners gained through surveys, focus groups, reference groups, field tests and online discussions.

The Ontario Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities introduced the concept of a Continuous Improvement Performance Management System (CIPMS) to Ontario’s Literacy and Basic Skills adult literacy delivery agencies in 2001. CIPMS is designed to create a cohesive set of policies and improved processes throughout the system so that programs can better work together to address client needs.

This document is a resource guide on marketing strategies intended for Ontario’s community literacy agencies. Community Literacy of Ontario created this guide as part of a project that it had undertaken in response to requests from the field for useful marketing strategies, tools and resources.

This guide was developed to help community literacy agencies develop their own policies and procedures. An introductory chapter explains how to use the guide and is followed by chapters on organizational policies, administrative policies, operational policies (human resources and financial management), and a supporting documents section. The guide is structured to offer basic information on these various policy areas.