Distance Education in Canada
Still a Long Way to Go
Dateline: 04/21/97
The Need for Distance Education in Canada
A background paper "Lifelong Learning on the Knowledge Highway," prepared for the Canadian Office of Learning Technologies in 1995 identified many of the trends that are putting pressure on the traditional Canadian education system.
Things like:
- the explosion of information as a result of new technology
- a changing workplace which calls for the constant upgrading of skills - technical, management, language, communications - the list goes on, and it's a long one
- the changing nature of work - more contracting, part-time, temporary jobs
- the changing makeup of the workforce itself - more older, part-time, female, and multicultural workers.
Add to those pressures the huge Canadian land base, an unevenly distributed population and an explosion of new technology, and it seems to me that distance education in Canada should be more easily accessible than it is now, especially at the college and university levels.
There are a lot of groups who have been working in this area. The Office of Learning Technologies alone has more than 90 projects in its database, and says that is only a small portion of the work they have funded. And just about all the Ministries of Education in Canada claim it is on their agenda.
Progress in Distance Education in Canada
There have been some inroads.
Athabasca University gets high marks for providing a full MBA online. Using Lotus Notes (the software comes as part of the tuition package), you can take your whole MBA without having to go to a classroom. They do have session meetings so students can physically connect with a group, but just about all the work is done online. They are gradually increasing their use of the Internet as well. In addition, Athabasca offers a full range of undergraduate distance education courses.
The University of Western Ontario offers its Executive MBA through a form of distance learning, but it involves trundling down to a classroom in one of seven major Canadian cities for videoconferences. It doesn't strike me as all that much farther ahead than twenty years ago when we had courses piped in by television to classrooms at Carleton University. Some progress, I suppose, but not twenty years' worth.
The TeleLearning Network of Centres of Excellence includes a research project on Virtual-U software, "one of the world's first Web-based course delivery systems," and there are other research advances coming out of work by the TeleLearning Network also.
That's the good news.
Work to be Done in Distance Education
I'm amazed, however, when I go to check out the University of Waterloo Distance Education Program. True, they offer more than 250 degree-credit courses by distance education, in more than 50 subject areas. You can get a B.A., a B.A. in Environmental Studies, or a B.Sc. But, and it's a big but, most courses consist of notes and audio tapes, with some video. For 1997-98, they are only offering five courses that require use of the Internet. (One of those courses is psychopathology!) It's a start, but I really thought a university so far advanced in the computer field would have been applying those skills more directly to the delivery of its programs.
I was even more startled to read in a recent "Maclean's Canadian Universities" issue that there is still resistance in the academic community to letting go of the traditional methods of teaching, as well as a perception that corporate involvement in projects is a threat. It surprises me because most of the professors I know have been using the Internet for their own research and communications needs a lot longer than the rest of us.
It might be a pipe dream, but I think if Canada is ever going to be able to create this "lifelong learning culture" our politicians and business leaders talk about, then we are going to have to pick up the pace in finding better, quicker, and more flexible ways to deliver education and skills training to all of us, wherever we are, and whenever we need it.
Until then, fortunately the Internet and associated technology opens up the doors for us to get the information we need and train ourselves.
Related Resources
- Education in Canada
- University and College Education
- Canadian University Study Skills
- Education Finances in Canada
