Manitoba Education Distance Learning

The Manitoba Education Distance Learning programme - run by the Manitoba Ministry of Education - offers three distance learning options of which the the Web Based Course (WBC) Option, is more obviously of relevance to those interested in virtual schools and online distance learning models. WBC offers schools and teachers access to centrally developed courses and the province wide LMS to provide their own learning programmes - blended or online.

Its website is http://www.edu.gov.mb.ca/k12/dl/wbc/index.html .

Further information

In 2009-2010 there were approximately 4,000 student enrolments on the WBC making it the largest of the three options - compared with 530 for Teacher Mediated Option (TMO) and 3,400 for Independent Study Option (ISO).

Manitoba Education is currently updating the Blackboard/WebCT platform to Blackboard Learn version 9.1, available in January 2012.

The Teacher Mediated Option (TMO) has also offered print based courses, supported (during the school day) with scheduled, teacher-hosted, teleconference 'classes'.

The Independent Study Option (ISO) is predominantly print-based although with some growing use of web conferencing tools.

References

• “State of the Nation: K-12 Online Learning in Canada”, iNACOL November 2010
• http://www.inacol.org/research/docs/iNACOL_CanadaStudy10-finalweb.pdf

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