E-Learning in Canada

IDEA GROUP PUBLISHING ITJ3462 701 E. ChocolateJournal Avenue, of Distance Suite 200, Education Hershey Technologies, PA 17033-1240, 5(1), USA 1-6, January-March 2007 Tel: 717/533-8845; Fax 717/533-8661; URL-http://www.idea-group.com

Rory McGreal, Athabasca University, Canada Terry Anderson, Athabasca University, Canada

A principal characteristic of the belonging to numerous diverse First Canadian experience with e-learning Nations communities. Moreover, almost is the uniquely Canadian feature of 25% of Canadians speak French as a first provincial jurisdiction over education. language and are mostly resident in the Canada is the only country that does not province of Quebec. Finally, Canada is have a national department or ministry an immigrant nation with major pockets of education. Therefore, any investiga- of immigrants residing in communities tion of e-learning in Canada must focus within the major metropolitan areas. more on specific provincial initiatives This creates geographic and cultural, in technologically enhanced learn- as well as linguistic, barriers that make ing rather than a Canadian overview. it difficult for people to communicate. In the best sense, Canada’s e-learn- These obstacles vary from province to ing programming can be viewed as a province and in the far northern territo- patchwork quilt made up of interesting ries. Addressing them requires different projects, programs, and initiatives. In approaches in different regions with the worst sense, it is a set of disparate diverse communities. and uncoordinated activities constantly Interest at the national level in struggling with and reinventing solu- e-learning was driven mainly through tions to problems solved elsewhere. increasing concern over the develop- Canada is a large country unlike ment of Canada’s “education industry.” any other. The vast majority of the CANARIE, Canada’s advanced Internet population lives in the south of the development organisation, has imple- country within 100 kilometres of the mented the world’s fastest Internet US border with scattered, remote, and backbone, CANet4, which spans the characteristically small communities country from east to west and includes spread throughout the vast northern isolated northern regions. This “super- regions. The majority of the population net” links public and private research in these remote regions are aboriginal, institutes, companies involved in re-

Copyright © 2007, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited. Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 5(1), 1-6, January-March 2007 search and development in information sites and human support to different technology, as well as higher education institutions delivering learning in their institutions. The now defunct Telelearn- respective provinces. ing Network of Centres of Excellence There is considerable activity in (1995 -2002) was a geographically e-learning in several provinces, while distributed network of researchers and others have very little. There is also a client communities from across Canada, wide range of Canadian approaches who collectively researched the devel- depending on the level of education opment, application, and evaluation and the types of learning. The net- of advanced learning technologies. works described above represent one Finally, the federal, National Science approach. Other provincial networks and Engineering Research Council have also evolved to support the grow- has funded a 5-year Canadian research ing number of traditional universities project known as Lornet, a partnership that are offering some programs, or of six universities across Canada that parts of programs, over the Internet. is developing interoperability tools In fact, the majority of courses offered for e-learning based on semantic Web in Canadian universities now have at tools, IEEE LOM, SCORM, and other least some component of either World standards. Despite these federal initia- Wide Web content and/or require some tives, the provinces maintained their communications using e-mail. independence and continued to act au- This growing use of e-learning by tonomously, if not at cross purposes. institutions has stimulated the growth The first provincial initiatives can of collaborative networks or consortia, be traced back to the earliest prov- especially in the western provinces. ince-wide distance learning network The prairie province of Saskatchewan in Newfoundland, TETRA (Telehealth adopted a Technology Enhanced Learn- & Educational Technology Research ing (TEL) Action Plan in 1997, which Agency), in 1977; to the 1986 found- led to the creation of Campus Saskatch- ing of Contact North/Contact Nord ewan, a partnership model for promot- in Northern Ontario; and to the 1993 ing interinstitutional collaboration “to beginnings of the TeleEducation New achieve shared goals and priorities for Brunswick project. These uniquely the use of technology enhanced learn- Canadian networks began as audio and ing.” Campus Manitoba shares a similar audiographic networks using simple mandate in a neighbouring province teleconferencing and computing appli- with Inter-universities North, which cations and evolved into online e-learn- focuses on providing University-level ing networks as the Internet matured and programming in the more isolated com- the World Wide Web appeared. These munities of the North. BC Campus is an networks provide (or provided, in the online educational service in the west case of TeleEducation NB) e-learning coast province of British Columbia that

Copyright © 2007, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited. Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 5(1), 1-6, January-March 2007 connects students and educators through sity of Waterloo has a long history of a single access point to online learning distance education and more recently resources available at BC institutions. has been the lead institution in the Co- In addition, BC Campus provides funds operative Learning Object Exchange competitively for e-learning content (CLOE), which is a collaboration among development and maintains a repository Ontario universities and colleges for for distribution of this electronic con- the development, sharing, and reuse of tent. eCampus Alberta is a consortium multimedia-rich learning resources us- of 15 colleges and technical institutes ing a common repository. We previously designed to stimulate and facilitate on- mentioned Contact North/Contact Nord line learning in the western mountain as a leading example of a collaborative province of Alberta. Alberta North is e-learning network. a complementary consortium serving Quebec, Canada’s only unilin- institutions in Alberta’s northern region gual French-speaking province has with participation in the Northwest supported the previously mentioned Territories. Nationally, the Canadian TÉLUQ as a leading open university. Virtual University consortium brings At the community college level the together the e-learning departments of newly named CÉGEPáDISTANCE twelve different universities in eight carries on a 15-year tradition of sup- provinces into a common Web site. porting distance education and e-learn- Alberta is a Canadian leader in ing.SOFAD (Société de Formation à e-learning with Athabasca University, Distance des Commissions Scolaires which is Canada’s only open univer- du Québec) produces adult distance sity or single-mode distance delivery learning courses. Canal Savoir (Corpo- institution. Previous open universi- ration pour l’Avancement de Nouvelles ties have been merged into traditional Applications des Langages) is Quebec’s universities, making them dual-mode. principal provider of televised distance The former British Columbia Open education courses from member univer- University is now a department of the sities, colleges, and telecommunications new Thompson Rivers University, and partners. Téléuniversité du Québec (TÈLUQ) is New Brunswick, Canada’s only now formally a part of the Université bilingual (French-English) province, du Québec à Montrèal. hosts distance education course offer- In Ontario, Canada’s most populous ings from the Université du Moncton, province, the government has left the a French-speaking university, and from decision making relating to e-learning the English-speaking University of New to the different institutions, from which Brunswick. The province is unique in a few leaders and interesting initiatives Canada in hosting two private sec- have emerged. TV Ontario produces tor e-learning universities delivering televised learning content. The Univer- graduate programs in business and

Copyright © 2007, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited. Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 5(1), 1-6, January-March 2007 psychology at Lansbridge University es. Nevertheless, e-learning is expand- and Yorkville University, respectively. ing as the vast majority of universities The province also hosts the training/ and community colleges continue to mentoring department for Skillsoft, the expand their e-learning options for the largest e-learning company in the world. benefit of their students. The average From Fredericton, NB, mentors train Canadian university student now works workplace learners all over the world part time (or full time) while studying in skills such as project management, and is demanding more flexibility in Microsoft professional, Cisco, Sun, the course offerings. Significant trends Oracle, and other certifications. in Canadian e-learning that should be Newfoundland, as we noted above, watched include: was the Canadian leader in distance education, which began in Memo- • The development of common rial University’s Telemedicine unit. standards supporting the interoper- The Open Learning and Information ability of learning resources in the Network(OLIN) is an organization form of learning objects; that brings together public and private • The implementation of technical sector institutions and companies that standards and interoperability are involved in different aspects of e- tools for instructional design and learning at different educational and activities; training levels. • The establishment of learning In addition to these Canadian object repositories with content universities, US universities are estab- available in common interoperable lishing campuses in several Canadian formats using XML; provinces and offering e-learning pro- • The development and implemen- gramming. Interestingly, the province tation of more robust and people- of Ontario, Canada’s largest province friendly learning management and is allowing the opening of campuses content management systems; of US universities, for example the • The development and implementa- University of Phoenix, and the DeVries tion of social software providing Institute, while prohibiting any pres- students with electronic modes for ence by Athabasca University, based connecting online socially; in another province. • The continued rapid growth in “blended learning,” the use of Future Trends in e-learning in various forms in E-learning in Canada traditional universities; It is evident from the Canadian e- • The growth in the use of open learning description provided above that source applications, open course there is a wide variety of approaches to content, and open access re- implementation in the different provinc- search;

• The continuing growth in the ac- Summary ceptance of “exchange” credits It is evident that any view of e- from other universities. First- and learning in Canada must be informed by second-year courses are already the uniquely Canadian feature of pro- accepted by universities across vincial jurisdiction over education. As Canada. was noted in the introduction, Canada • The growth in the acceptance of is the only country that does not have Prior Learning Assessment and a national department/ministry of edu- Recognition (PLAR) as more and cation. Therefore, any investigation of more adults change career paths; e-learning in Canada must focus more • The growth in the use of mobile on specific provincial initiatives in tech- devices for learning, taking ad- nologically enhanced learning rather vantage of the interoperability of than a Canadian overview. A distinctive learning objects; “Canadian” model cannot exist (unless • The growth in the use of games one views disparate models as evidence for learning, taking advantage of a uniquely Canadian archetype). of the technical and pedagogical The provinciality of Canadian e-learn- opportunities made available by ing serves to highlight the inability of the video game consoles and ap- Canada to sustain national strategies plications; and focus, such as those implemented • The continued rapid growth of in many other countries, due to the frac- Athabasca University, Canada’s tious nature of federal and provincial Open University on track to have relations, particularly in education. more students than any other university in Canada

Rory McGreal is associate vice president of research at Athabasca University — Can- ada’s Open University. Previously, he was the executive director of TeleEducation New Brunswick, a province-wide bilingual (French/English) distributed distance learning network. Before that, he was responsible for the expansion of Contact North (a distance education network in the remote region of Northern Ontario – serving remote native reserves and small mining towns). He has worked in arctic Quebec teaching Naskapi Cree students. His PhD (1999) in computer technology in education at Nova Southeast- ern University’s School for computer and information science was taken at a distance using the Internet. Rory was the founder of the world’s first e-learning Web site for TeleEducation NB and one of the world's first metadata learning object repositories, the TeleCampus. He has been the leader in the development of the CanCore metadata implementation profile for implementing the IEEE LOM international standard for

Copyright © 2007, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited. Journal of Distance Education Technologies, 5(1), 1-6, January-March 2007 learning objects. In the past, he has worked in Canada as a teacher and abroad in the Seychelles, the Middle East and Europe in various capacities as a teacher, union president, ESL technological training co-ordinator, instructional designer, language and computer laboratory co-ordinator, and educational advisor. He has served on the board of the TeleLearning Research Network of Centres of Excellence, the Commonwealth of Learning’s Knowledge Management Group and the Education steering committee for CANARIE, Canada’s broadband research network. In 2002, he was honoured as recipient of the Wedemeyer Award for Distance Education Practitioner. Rory has had published numerous articles and book chapters on e-learning including an edited book Online Education Using Learning Objects.

Terry Anderson is professor and Canada research chair in distance education at Atha- basca University — Canada’s Open University. He has published widely in the area of distance education and educational technology and has co-authored or edited five books and numerous papers. Terry is active in provincial, national, and international distance education associations and a regular presenter at professional conferences. He teaches educational technology courses in Athabasca’s Masters of Distance Education program. Terry is also the director of CIDER – the Canadian Institute for Distance Education Research (cider.athabascau.ca) and the editor of the International Review of Research on Distance and Open Learning (IRRODL www.irrodl.org). The complete text of his most recent edited book The Theory and Practice of Online Learning is available as an open access resource at cde.athabascau.ca/online_book. More information is available on his web site at http://cider.athabascau.ca/Members/terrya.