New Brunswick Learning Programme

The New Brunswick Distance Learning (NBDL) programme offers students to access courses online, anywhere, anytime. There are currently (2011) over 40 high school courses offered - including all required courses at grades 11 and 12 levels as well as many optional and advanced level courses.

Its website is http://www.gnb.ca/0000/as/dl-e.asp

Further information

NBDL is designed to allow students to access courses that, because of scheduling conflicts, illness or limited course availability in their own schools, might not otherwise be available to them. It appears that there are parallel Anglophone and Francophone programmes (see below).

Distance facilitators use online course chat rooms, discussion boards, email and videoconferencing whilst local facilitators are on hand at the students’ schools to ensure that the students can access and use all of the tools and equipment they need to complete the course. Students work independently, completing online interactive activities, assignments and tests as they progress through the course.

Classroom teachers may also register an entire class in a specific course.

iNACOL 2010 reported enrolments declining:

"...The majority of distance education enrolments in the province are from supplemental students. Enrolments in the English online learning programme continued a downward trend in 2009-10, with only 1,677 students enroling in one or more courses (compared with 2,010 in 2008-09 and 2,911 in 2007-08). The Ministry also allows classroom teachers to use online courses with their face-to-face students. The number of students involved with this option also decreased in 2009-10, with only 1,575 enrolments in the provincial LMS (compared to 1,933 in 2008-09 and 1,763 in 2007-08)."

"The number of students enroled in the Francophone distance education programme was 328 in 2009-10 (down from 701 in 2008-09 and 708 in 2007-08). This decline was largely due to the fact that the Ministry had to reduce the number of distance education courses offered because of the financial context."

New Brunswick also had a shared online programme with ConseiL Scolaire acadien provincial (CSAP) and New Brunswick, in turn, offers access to its programme to students on Prince Edward Island.

References

See

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

• "The Importance of One-to-One Computing to New Brunswick Public Schools"
• http://121computing.wikispaces.com/