Canada

Many if not most Canadian universities have competence in e-learning. Several major e-learning systems past and present have come from Canada, for example, WebCT out of the University of British Columbia. Desire2Learn is another Canadian-based learning management system, currently subject to a patent challenge from Blackboard Inc. (see....)

However, in recent years 'stand-alone' distance education institutions have in general fallen out of favour. The long-standing Open Learning Agency of British Columbia was closed and its open university activities were transferred to the newly created Thompson Rivers University, based in Kamloops in the interior of BC. The Distance Education and Technology unit at UBC has been absorbed into UBC's Office of Learning Technologies http://olt.ubc.ca. The Télé-université in Québec has been integrated into the larger multi-campus Université de Québec. Indicative of this greater integration between distance learning and e-learning has been the merger of the Canadian Association of Distance Education (CADE) and AMTECH, the association for educational technologists, into the new Canadian Network for Innovation in Education (CNIE). On the other hand, Athabasca University continues to develop and thrive, although its use of online courses is largely focused on post-graduate programs, such as its MBA.

There have also been some false starts in major government-funded e-learning projects. The main Federally-funded research programme (TeleLearning) was closed after its first three-year period (usually NCE projects are renewed for at least a second period) on the grounds that the research had not lead to any major scientific breakthroughs; and the charismatic start-up TechBC was closed and residual activity absorbed into Simon Fraser University. Both the closure of the OLA and TechBC were as a result of a new provincial government in British Columbia trying to cut spending to balance the provincial budget. However, at the same time, the BC government did create BCCampus http://bccampus.ca, a co-ordinating service for all educational online programs in BC, providing funding to institutions for the development of e-learning materials, training and support services to the smaller colleges, and a one-stop portal for students for online programs in BC. A similar institution, e-Learning Alberta, has been created in the next province.

Thus provincial governments and institutions have tended to see online distance education as a sub-category of e-learning, and thus there has been a tendency to integrate distance education units within broader learning and technology initiatives. At the same time, governments have been fostering within institutions the development of e-learning materials, and co-operation and co-ordination in e-learning activities.

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