Athabasca University is known as "Canada's Open University". They lay claim to offering the world's first online MBA program. AU also serves (for me at least) as a reminder of the promise of elearning in Canada - and how unfulfilled that promise is today. In late 90's, early 2000, Canada was clearly a world leader in exploring educational uses of technology. And it only made sense - we are a large country with a geographically dispersed population (especially in many remote communities). Since then, it appears that country after country has exceeded Canada's role as innovators (CCL has acknowledged Canada's declining role in elearning in their last several annual reports on the "state of learning in Canada"). We lack a national strategy (well, that's what CCL says, I think we lack a national conversation - strategy is only valuable to the degree that it influences policy and funding. I'm much more interested in conversations about how learning technologies can improve quality of and access to learning). In spite of these short comings, I did find this announcement from Xerox to be encouraging: "Xerox Canada has partnered with Athabasca University to develop a research program focused on advancing mobile learning and e-learning for students living in remote or rural areas of Canada". Now, if we can just get that national conversation going, perhaps we can catch up with UK, AU, and others.
Posted by gsiemens at February 12, 2008 9:56 AM | TrackBack