Student engagement promotes communication and knowledge acquisition, a concept that is challenged in the online environment as few opportunities exist to physically connect instructors and learners. Limited research suggests that social media is a tool that can positively impact student engagement in the online classroom, which is especially…

This article is derived from a three-year ethnography of distributed medical education at one Canadian University across two Canadian provinces. It explores the ways in which students and staff work inside the technologically rich teaching environments within which the curriculum is delivered. Drawing on data constructed through observations,…

The Canadian Remote Sciences Laboratories (CRSL) website (www.remotelab.ca) was successfully employed in a study of the differences in the performance and perceptions of students' about their learning in the laboratory (in-person) versus learning at a remote location (remote access). The experiment was completed both in-person and via remote…

Canada's important areas of expertise in open educational resources (OER) are beginning to be built upon or replicated more broadly in all education and training sectors. This paper provides an overview of the state of the art in OER initiatives and open higher education in general in Canada, providing insights into what is happening nationally…

Different technologies have been used for decades to support adult education and learning. These include radio, television and audio and video cassettes. More recently digital ICTs such as computers, tablets, e-books, and mobile technology have spread at great speed and also found their way into the teaching and learning of literacy and numeracy…

In today's world where tuition fees continue to rise rapidly and the demand for higher education increases in both the developing and developed world, it is important to find additional and alternative learning pathways that learners can afford. Traditional education as we have known it has begun to change, allowing for new parallel learning…

The field of distance education is composed of a multiplicity of topics leading to a vast array of research literature. However, the research does not provide a chronological picture of the topics it addresses, making it difficult to develop an overview of the evolution and trends in the literature. To address this issue, a co-word analysis was…

For several years, the government of the western Canadian province of Alberta has drafted policies and conducted research on the problem of populations under-represented in adult education. This Alberta-North and Athabasca University study, funded by the Alberta government's Innovation Fund, uses the advice and educational experiences of northern…

The incorporation of new learning technologies into courses at Canadian universities has been largely undertaken at the initiative of individual instructors, rather than in response to explicit institutional direction or faculty initiatives. This appears to be particularly the case with the migration of individual courses that were formally…

The relative ubiquity of computer access and the rapid development of information and communication technology have profoundly impacted teaching and learning at a distance. Relatively little is currently known about the characteristics of those students who participate in distance e-learning courses at the secondary school level. In an effort to…

We report here on an exploratory formative evaluation of a project to integrate mobile learning into a Western Canadian college nursing program. Third-year students used Hewlett Packard iPAQ mobile devices for five weeks in a practice education course in April-May, 2007. Koole's (2009) "Framework for the Rational Analysis of Mobile…

This research project examined how to develop and sustain online, asynchronous learning communities in continuous intake, distance education environments for learners in grades 7 through 10. The study is an action research project that is based upon in-depth, qualitative data. Interviews were conducted with distance education teachers,…

Over the past two decades, distance education has become a reality of rural schooling in Newfoundland and Labrador. In this article, I provide historical background into the challenges facing rural schools in the province and how distance education was introduced to address that challenge. I also describe how that system of distance education…

The authors, library practitioners from either side of the Atlantic Ocean, embarked on a dialogue about the ethical challenges encountered in providing library services to distance learners. Unable to find an existing, appropriate ethical framework for their discussion, they agreed to devise their own, informed by relevant professional codes and…

This article describes an educational project using videoconferencing computer technology and Internet access with students with deafness in Canadian schools. An outline of an educational lesson and student benefits using videoconferencing to support the instructional objectives is provided. A variety of methods of communicating using computer…